Chapter 18 - Safehouse in the Pines
The world stopped spinning in a violent crunch of metal, tree branches, and deploying airbags.
Smoke hissed from the crumpled hood of the sedan. The smell of burning radiator fluid and cold pine needles filled my senses.
"Julian!" I coughed, fighting my way out of the deflated passenger airbag.
He was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious, blood pooling through the dark wool of his tuxedo jacket where the shotgun pellets had struck his left shoulder.
"Julian, please! Wake up!" I cried, unbuckling my seatbelt and pressing two trembling fingers against his neck. His pulse was thready, fast, and weak.
Behind us, up on the highway, headlights swept across the shattered guardrail. I heard the slam of car doors and the heavy crunch of boots on wet gravel. They were coming down the ravine.
Desperation gave me superhuman strength. I reached across Julian, unlatched his door, and pulled him out of the vehicle into the freezing downpour. He groaned, his eyelashes fluttering as he tried to find his footing in the slick mud.
"Elena... run..." he murmured, barely lucid. "Leave me..."
"Shut up," I whispered fiercely, tears mixing with the rain on my cheeks. "You spent five months keeping me alive. I'm not leaving you in this ditch."
Supporting his weight under his uninjured arm, I dragged him through the dense pine underbrush, moving away from the vehicle and down toward an old hunter’s cabin perched above the riverbank—a structure I had spotted during our descent.
We collapsed through the unlocked wooden door just as beam after beam of tactical flashlights swept across the wreckage of our car fifty yards away. I locked the deadbolt, dragged a heavy pine dresser across the door, and hauled Julian onto a low cot in the corner of the dark, dusty room.
Working by the dim light of my phone screen, I stripped off his torn jacket and shirt. The wound was horrific—a jagged spray of buckshot across his shoulder and upper chest, bleeding steadily.
"Hold on, Julian. Please hold on," I sobbed quietly, ripping clean cotton strips from an old flannel blanket stored in a trunk.
I pressed down hard on the wound to stop the hemorrhaging. Julian cried out, his hands gripping my wrists with desperate strength. His gray eyes, dilated with shock and agony, locked onto mine.
"Elena..."
"Don't talk. Save your strength."
"No... listen to me," he gasped, his fingers tightening around my hand. "The silver rattle... in the mahogany box. When Boyd inspected it... he found a micro-seam along the bell base. If you twist the handle counter-clockwise... it opens. The original bearer certificates... are registered to you. Victoria... she didn't hate you at the end, Elena."
I froze, my hands covered in his warm blood. "What are you talking about?"
"Victoria... knew Alistair would come back," Julian whispered, his breath shallow. "She hated Matthias’s weakness... but she knew you had the spine of a survivor. She left the family assets to Maya... through you. Because she knew you were the only one... strong enough to kill House Dre for good."
A heavy thud rattled the cabin’s front door.
May you like
The doorknob jiggled violently. Then came a low, gravelly voice through the wood: "We know you're in there, Mrs. Dre. Alistair wants you alive. The lawyer... not so much. Open the door, and we make this clean."
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