Chapter 5 - The Siege of the Estate
The sound of gunfire echoing across the frozen lawns of the Barrington estate was not the sharp, cinematic crack of a movie shoot; it was a dull, heavy thud—like a sledgehammer striking frozen earth—followed by the shattering of reinforced glass somewhere near the west security lodge.
"Get down!"
Dominic didn't shout instructions; he moved. In a single, fluid motion, his large hand caught my arm, yanking me behind the heavy mahogany bulk of his partner’s desk just as a volley of high-velocity rounds chewed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the study.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
Glass exploded inward in a glittering shower of crystal shrapnel, raining down across the Persian rugs and embedding themselves deep into the walnut wainscoting.
"Marco!" Dominic roared over the din, drawing a black, custom-milled Sig Sauer from his shoulder holster with terrifying speed.
"The perimeter sensors are jammed, Boss!" Marco yelled back, dropping to one knee near the library doors, his H&K submachine gun spitting a controlled three-round burst down the dark hallway outside. "It’s a professional extraction team! Six men, minimum. Level IV body armor. They bypassed the biometric locks using an EMP relay!"
I pressed my back against the cold wainscoting, my hands clamped over my ears, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
My mother, my brain screamed through the panic. Elena’s room is down the hall in the east wing! She can't walk! She's sitting in a wheelchair!
"Elena," I gasped, looking up at Dominic as he crouched beside the desk, checking the magazine of his pistol with cold, mechanical calm. "Your mother—she's in the east wing! The glass—"
"Marco!" Dominic barked without looking at me. "Secure the east stairwell! Get Elena into the basement vault before they breach the second-floor gallery!"
"On it!" Marco vaulted down the hallway, his combat boots thudding against the hardwood floor.
Dominic turned his slate-gray eyes back to me. In the chaos of breaking glass and distant shouting, his face was an absolute monument of ice. He reached into his coat, pulled out a heavy steel-cased key ring, and pressed it into my hand.
"Take this," he commanded, his voice dropping into a low, unarguable register. "Go down the private service elevator behind my desk. It leads directly to the generator bunker beneath the lake bulkhead. There’s a boat tied to the pier. Get in, take the key in the ignition, and do not stop until you reach the marina in Kenosha."
I stared at the keys in my palm, then up at him, my voice shaking with disbelief.
"And you? What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to finish a conversation," Dominic said.
He didn't wait for my answer. He vaulted over the top of the mahogany desk, his Sig Sauer raised, and stepped out into the bullet-riddled hallway just as a second volley of automatic gunfire chewed through the plaster crown molding above the doorway.
"Dominic!" I screamed.
He didn't look back.
The heavy oak study door swung shut with a muffled click, leaving me alone in the shattered, freezing room with the sound of a war being fought over the roof of my head.
I looked down at the key ring in my hand.
I thought of my apartment in Chicago. I thought of my nursing license. I thought of the fifty-dollar bills I used to count out on my kitchen table, praying I wouldn't starve.
Then I thought of the old woman sitting in the east wing who had smiled at my minestrone soup, and the man who had looked at my bruised knuckles with a grief he had spent a lifetime trying to bury.
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I didn't run to the service elevator.
I dropped to my knees, crawled through the shattered glass on the Persian rug, grabbed a heavy brass fireplace poker from the hearth, and crept out into the dark, smoking hallway.
