Chapter 82 - The Gunfire in the Mist
The deafening crack of the rifle shot reverberated off the granite face of the surrounding ridge, turning the crisp morning air into a cloud of sulfur and flying safety glass. Before the echo could even bounce back across the hollow, Caleb, the young mechanic, hit me shoulder-first, knocking me and Lily down into the freezing gravel behind the front tire of the lead patrol cruiser.
"Get down! Keep her flat!" Caleb barked, his voice gritty with gravel dust as his broad frame completely covered Lily.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Beneath me, Lily didn’t scream; she whimpered, her tiny fingers digging into the wool of my coat, trembling so violently that I could feel the tremor in my own marrow. Shattered fragments of the town car’s windshield rained down on the roof above us with the dry rattle of hail.
Across the driveway, two state troopers had already drawn their sidearms, dropping to one knee behind their open doors while Detective Vance pulled a heavy black tactical shotgun from the cruiser’s trunk. "Tree line at eleven o’clock!" Vance shouted into his shoulder mic. "Standby Albany, shots fired at the clearing on St. Jude’s Road. Officer under fire, suspect armed with high-caliber rifle!"
Through the triangle of open space between the cruiser's wheel well and the dirt, I saw Evelyn. The old matriarch hadn't dived for cover. Her knees had buckled, but she remained perched on the stone curb beside her ruined vehicle, frozen like an obsidian statue. The bullet had missed her temple by mere inches; a single thin crimson line blossomed across her cheek where a razor-sharp shard of safety glass had grazed the pale, parchment skin. Her black lace veil hung in tatters across her shoulder, fluttering in the cold wind that surged down from the pine ridges.
"Evelyn! Get behind the engine block!" Vance roared, reaching out with an iron grip to drag her down by the collar of her tailored cashmere coat.
She didn't look at him. Her pale, rheumy eyes weren't fixed on the shadowed forest or the officers who were rapidly deploying into tactical wedges. Her gaze was locked entirely on the envelope that had slipped from the state attorney’s hands during the blast. It lay facedown in the mud, its blue Canadian seal smeared with oil from the undercarriage of the squad car.
"He promised..." Evelyn whispered, her voice barely a dry rattle, audible only because the world had fallen into that terrible, breathless silence between gunshots. "He swore the file was incinerated at the parish house thirty years ago."
"Who promised, Evelyn?" I demanded, crawling forward an inch despite Caleb’s hand pressing warningly against my spine. "Who is up there with that rifle?"
Before she could answer, a loud revving sound tore through the thick spruce behind the church cemetery. It wasn't the steady hum of a modern engine, but the clattering, un-muffled roar of an old flatbed farm truck tearing through brush and dry deadfall. Wheels spun in wet peat, whining in agony, before catching traction on the hidden logging road behind the ridge.
"Suspect is mobile! Moving north toward Route 22!" Vance yelled into his radio, motioning for the second cruiser to peel out. "Block the weir bridge! Don't let that vehicle reach the Canadian border crossing!"
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As the cruiser tore down the driveway with sirens wailing, the suffocating pall of blue exhaust hung over the clearing. I pulled Lily tighter against my chest, her cold face buried in my neck. The secret of Montreal hadn't merely broken our family—it was now drawing blood.
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