Melissa watched her sons ruin my little girl’s Easter dress and called it a joke—so I calmly told everyone to leave, and the look on her face said she had just remembered something important. / Chapter 115 / 117

Chapter 115 - The Collapse of Oak Ridge

shifted violently beneath our feet with a sickening, grinding roar.

The marble slabs of the sanctuary floor snapped in two like brittle biscuits. Huge cracks shot across the altar platform, swallowing the pillar candles, which fell into the dark, yawning fissures below, their flames extinguished instantly in clouds of rising grey dust.

"Lily!" I screamed, lunging forward as the floor beneath the choir chairs gave a terrifying lurch downward.

The entire southern wall of the chapel—a massive structure of ironstone and slate—was detaching from the mountain. Through the widening gap, I could see the terrifying drop of the limestone quarry below: a four-hundred-foot cliff of jagged gray stone, half-filled with stagnant, green water and choked with rusted machinery.

"Get out!" Vance yelled, his voice barely audible over the thunderous roar of collapsing masonry. He grabbed Melissa by her coat collar, hauling her back toward the main entrance as a section of the timber ceiling caved in, sending heavy, burning oak beams crashing down into the aisle. "Julian, take the doors! Out! OUT!"

"Katherine!" Julian screamed, gesturing frantically toward the door as a cloud of choking lime dust swallowed the room. "The roof is coming down!"

I didn't look back. I didn't care about the collapsing roof, the federal marshal, or the madman who had set the charges. My entire world had narrowed to a single point: the pale, terrified girl tied to the chair on the crumbling edge of the altar.

The altar platform tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. The heavy marble altar table slid sideways, crashing through the outer stained-glass window and plummeting four hundred feet into the quarry abyss below. A fraction of a second later, a hollow BOOM echoed up from the rocks.

Lily's chair began to slide toward the edge.

"LILY!" I threw myself across the widening gap in the floor, my hands clawing at the broken edge of the marble steps.

My fingers caught the heavy wooden frame of the choir chair just as its rear legs slipped off the precipice. The weight of the chair and my daughter nearly dragged me over the edge. I screamed, my muscles straining to their absolute limit, my feet wedged against a exposed iron joist.

"I've got you!" I gasped, pulling with every ounce of strength left in my broken, exhausted body. "I've got you, Lily!"

I hauled the chair back onto the narrow ledge of stable marble. My hands flew to the knot behind her head, my fingers frantically working the wet, cold linen gag free.

"Mom!" Lily sobbed, the word bursting from her chest as the gag dropped away. She was crying hysterically, her face covered in white limestone dust. "Mom! He... he said you were dead! He said you abandoned me!"

"It was a lie!" I cried, grabbing a sharp piece of broken marble from the floor and sawing frantically at the thick nylon cords binding her wrists. "It was all a lie, baby! I'm here! I'm never leaving you again!"

The nylon fibers snapped one by one. Her hands came free, and she threw her arms around my neck, clinging to me with a desperate, crushing strength.

"Katherine!" Vance's voice bellowed through the smoke and dust. He was standing on the ledge near the main entrance, holding back a fallen rafter with his shoulder, his face streaked with sweat and blood. "The foundation is giving way! You have three seconds to cross!"

"Go, Lily! Run to Vance!" I shoved her toward the narrow wooden beam that still connected the crumbling altar island to the main entrance floor.

"Not without you!" Lily screamed.

"Go!" I roared.

Lily scrambled across the narrow beam, her small hands balancing against the trembling masonry walls. Vance caught her by the jacket, swinging her safely across the chasm to where Julian was waiting.

I stepped onto the beam.

Before my foot could settle, a hand clamped around my left ankle like a vise of cold steel.

I fell hard onto the splintered wood, my chin slamming into the beam, black spots dancing across my vision. I kicked wildly backward, looking down into the dust-filled haze.

Arthur.

He was hanging from the lower structural truss, his charcoal overcoat torn, his silver hair wild and matted with blood. His left hand was hooked around the rusted steel framework of the floor, and his right hand was clamped onto my leg with terrifying, supernatural strength. His teeth were bared in a grotesque, desperate snarl.

"You don't get to leave, Katherine!" Arthur screamed, his voice carrying the final, frantic rage of a dying titan. "You are part of this estate! You belong to Oak Ridge!"

"Let me go!" I kicked at his face with my heavy leather boot.

The heel of my boot caught him squarely on his aristocratic cheekbone, shattering his skin, blood welling out instantly across his face. But his fingers didn't loosen. His grip was locked with the cold rigidity of death.

"If I go into the pit," Arthur laughed—a wild, screeching sound that echoed off the collapsing mountain, "you go with me! We'll settle the trust in hell!"

Below us, another massive section of the quarry wall collapsed. A cloud of ancient, sulfurous dust rushed upward, blinding us, choking us, as the air filled with the screech of tearing iron.

"Katherine!"

A shadow dropped onto the beam beside me.

It was Vance.

Without a second of hesitation, Vance drew his tactical combat knife from his chest rig. He drove the heavy steel pommel straight down onto Arthur's wrist joint with sickening, bone-crushing force.

Arthur shrieked as his nerves deadened, his fingers involuntarily snapping open.

Vance pulled me backward onto the ledge, dragging me up into his arms as Arthur lost his final handhold on the rusted truss.

Arthur Van Der Bilt didn't scream as he fell.

He stared up at us through the swirling grey dust, his dark eyes wide, his bloody face frozen in a look of profound, terrifying astonishment, as the black abyss of the limestone quarry swallowed him whole.

A moment later, a heavy, resonant impact echoed up from the dark water below, followed by the final, apocalyptic collapse of the chapel's roof structure.

"RUN!" Vance screamed.

He grabbed my arm, shoving me through the ruined front entryway of the chapel into the open air of the mountain turnaround. Julian was already there, holding Lily close to his chest as the ground beneath the building buckled and slid away into the quarry pit.

We collapsed onto the frozen gravel of the driveway, turning just in time to watch the North Ridge Chapel disappear.

The dark ironstone spire tilted backward, snapped in two against the cliff face, and plunged silently down into the fog-shrouded abyss. A mountain of dust, rock, and ancient splintered timber rose into the gray sky, followed by a terrifying, heavy silence that settled over the mountain like a shroud.

The chapel was gone.

The 1928 Trust was gone.

Arthur Van Der Bilt was buried under eighty feet of shattered limestone and black water.

I lay on my back on the icy driveway, gasping for air, staring up at the cold gray clouds drifting overhead. The sky was breaking. A single, brilliant ray of golden afternoon sunlight cut through the overcast haze, illuminating the hemlock trees along the ridge.

"Mom..."

Lily dropped to her knees beside me, laying her head against my chest, her shoulders shaking with deep, silent sobs.

I raised my arms, wrapping them tightly around my daughter, pulling her so close I could feel the fast, vibrant rhythm of her living heart beating against my ribs. I buried my face in her hair, smelling the pine smoke and cold rain, weeping tears of pure, overwhelming relief.

"I've got you," I whispered, kissing the top of her head over and over again. "I've got you, Lily. It's over. It's finally over."

Beside us, Vance stood up slowly, sheathing his combat knife. He walked over to the dark blue Bentley, where Melissa was sitting on the ground against the front tire, her knees pulled to her chest, staring blankly at the dust cloud rising from the quarry with vacant, shattered eyes.