Chapter 4 - THE PHANTOM MEDICINE
4 -
“They're here,” Thomas muttered, immediately reaching for his holster and pulling out a heavy service pistol. “They have the local private security firms on Marcus Sterling’s payroll. They aren't coming to negotiate, Julian.”
“Emily is upstairs,” I said, panic threatening to overwhelm my senses. “I have to get her out.”
“Take the cellar tunnel,” Thomas commanded, moving toward the front foyer windows to assess the approaching vehicles. “When your grandfather built this estate in the 1950s, he connected the wine cellar to the old drainage culvert leading down to the private beach cove. My car is parked half a mile down Highway 1 behind the old fisherman’s shack. Take this drive.”
Thomas shoved the encrypted hard drive into my jacket pocket, right next to Rebecca’s crumpled wedding note.
“What about you?” I demanded.
“I was Sarah’s godfather, Julian,” Thomas said, his face setting into grim, unbreakable lines. “I failed to protect her two years ago because I believed the coroner’s fraudulent report. I am not going to fail her daughter. Now move!”
I bolted up the stairs two at a time.
My vision swam momentarily—a sudden, dizzying spike of vertigo that caused my shoulder to slam against the staircase banister. The poison. For the past two months, I had suffered from recurring dizzy spells, sudden numbness in my fingertips, and a persistent metallic taste in the back of my mouth. I had chalked it up to wedding anxiety and the grueling sixty-hour workweeks at the firm. But it wasn't stress. Rebecca had been steadily lacing my system with heavy-metal compounds, slowly dismantling my central nervous system from within.
I forced myself upright, fighting past the nausea, and kicked open Emily’s bedroom door.
Emily was sitting on her rug, holding her mother’s stuffed velvet rabbit. She looked up with wide, frightened eyes as the distant roar of high-powered engines echoed outside the house.
“Sweetheart, put your raincoat on right now,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and steady as humanly possible while my heart hammered like a war drum. “We’re going to play the secret passage game. The one Mommy taught you.”
Her eyes widened, recognizing the gravity of the words. Sarah had taught Emily the layout of the old house as a whimsical game of hide-and-seek, but Sarah had known even then that a day might come when those hidden passages would mean the difference between life and death.
Emily threw on her yellow rain jacket and grabbed my hand.
Downstairs, the front door violently shattered inwards with a deafening boom.
Heavy tactical boots stomped across the hardwood foyer.
“Vance!” a harsh, booming voice shouted from below—the voice of Marcus Sterling’s chief of private security, a ruthless ex-mercenary named Ray Vance (no relation, just a cruel coincidence of names). “Make this easy on yourself! Hand over the girl and the research keys, and you’ll walk away from this alive!”
A gunshot echoed through the ground floor, followed by the shattering of glass. Detective Miller was engaging them in the grand hallway.
“Run, Emily!” I whispered, scooping her up into my arms and sprinting toward the kitchen pantry.
Behind the floor-to-ceiling shelves of canned goods was a false wood panel. I pressed the hidden brass latch. The shelf swung open on well-oiled hinges, revealing the narrow, winding wooden stairs that led straight into the cold, stone-walled wine cellar beneath the foundation.
We slipped inside, and I pulled the shelf shut just as heavy footsteps reached the kitchen above our heads.
The air in the cellar was freezing, thick with the smell of damp earth and aged oak barrels. I set Emily down and used the small penlight on my keychain to guide our steps across the cobblestone floor. At the far end of the cellar, concealed behind three massive oak wine casks, was a heavy iron door that led into the storm drainage culvert.
I turned the rusted wheel latch. It groaned in protest, metal grinding against metal, before swinging outward into pitch-black darkness.
The sound of the ocean surf roared through the opening—a deafening, violent crash of waves against jagged coastal rocks.
“Hold on to my belt and don't let go, Emily,” I instructed, stepping into the damp, slippery concrete culvert.
Rainwater was already rushing around our ankles, cold as ice. The tunnel sloped steeply downward toward the cliffside. Behind us, from the cellar above, we heard the sound of the pantry door being violently ripped from its hinges.
May you like
“They're in the cellar!” a voice shouted from behind.
I grabbed Emily, pulled her tightly to my chest, and plunged into the darkness of the culvert, moving as fast as my poisoned, trembling legs could carry me toward the roaring storm outside.
