Chapter 16 - The Weight of the Gavel
The blast from the pickup truck's small secondary tank didn't level the building, but the concussive thump blew out the remaining loft windows and showered the courtyard with sparks. Ellis had already thrown the heavy emergency rope down the back hay hatch.
"Go! Esther, now!"
I grabbed the thick hemp rope and slid down into the cold, soft drift of snow banked against the north stone foundation, the icy shock biting through my denim. Ellis dropped beside me a second later, landing solidly, shotgun still clutched in his grip.
Around the front of the barn, flashing blue and red lights reflected off the snow-covered pine trees. The deputies hadn't been stopped by the bridge after all; they had abandoned their cruisers at the hemlock roadblock and commandeered two four-wheel-drive utility ATVs from the Miller farm down the road.
Sheriff Vance leaped off the lead four-wheeler, his service weapon drawn, followed by four state troopers in tactical vests.
"Down on the ground! Do not move!" Vance's voice boomed through the freezing mist.
Richard Sterling was on his knees twenty feet from the burning barn doors, gasping for breath, clutching his chest, the borrowed prison gun lying in the snow out of reach. He had collapsed under the sheer physical toll of his escape, his heart giving out beneath the weight of his own bitter malice.
Bridget stumbled out through the smoke, dragging a sobbing Kyle by his jacket collar. Her clothes were scorched, her hands blackened with soot, her eyes hollow, empty shells of defeat. When she saw the troopers surrounding the perimeter with rifles drawn, she dropped Kyle onto the frozen mud and fell to her knees, raising her trembling hands.
"He made us do it!" Bridget wailed, pointing a shaking, soot-stained finger at our father. "He said Esther stole our inheritance! He told Kyle to steal the van! It wasn't me! Esther, tell them! Tell them Daddy made me do it!"
I walked through the snow, stepping past Ellis's protective arm, stopping five feet from where my sister knelt in the dirt.
The heat of the burning barn warmed my back, but inside, I had never felt colder. I looked at Bridget, then down at Richard, who was wheezing, his face purple, his eyes glaring up at me with unyielding, impotent hatred even as a trooper pressed a knee into his back to cuff him.
"You slapped me at my wedding, Richard," I said, my voice steady, carrying over the crackle of the flames and the idling hum of the emergency vehicles. "You slapped me because you thought you owned every breath I took, every dollar I earned, and every dream I dared to keep for myself. You told me I was nothing without this family."
Richard spat blood into the snow, his teeth bared in a feral grimace. "You're a traitor... you always were..."
"No," I replied, turning my back on him completely to look at Bridget. "I was your daughter. I was your sister. But you traded that for twenty-four thousand dollars in wedding envelopes and a legacy built on sand. Take them, Sheriff. There is nothing left of them here."
As Vance clamped the steel cuffs around Richard’s wrists, the old man let out a pathetic groan of pain and defeat. Bridget began to shriek, thrashing against the female trooper who locked her hands behind her back, her promises of wealth and high society dissolving into the freezing mountain air. Kyle didn't even fight; he simply wept into the snowbank, clutching his shattered leg.
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The local volunteer fire engine roared into the clearing, its sirens whining as the crew deployed high-pressure hoses to douse the timber structure Donald had built fifty years ago.
Ellis stepped beside me, his arm wrapping around my trembling shoulders, pulling me tight against his side. As the water hissed against the hot cedar, turning the black smoke into white steam, I closed my eyes and leaned into him. The Sterling dynasty was dead. And for the first time, the ashes didn't feel like a burial—they felt like cleared soil.
