Chapter 35 - The Open Door
Evelyn screamed in agony, clutching her mangled shoulder as she backed away toward the edge of the sorting pit. Her guards lay incapacitated on the catwalk, overcome by the scalding blast of steam.
"You stupid, filthy little girl," Evelyn snarled through clenched teeth, her regal composure completely shattered into ugly, venomous hatred. "You have no idea what you’ve done. You think this ends here? I own this county! I own every judge, every prosecutor, every bank!"
Claire stepped forward through the clearing steam, the shotgun leveled directly at Evelyn’s face. Her face was smeared with mud, blood, and sweat, but her eyes were steady as ice.
"You don't own me," Claire said. "And you will never touch my daughter again."
"Claire, wait!" Ethan croaked from the floor, struggling to push himself up on shaking arms. "Don't! If you kill her, she wins. They will put you in a cage and take Lily forever."
Claire paused. The muscles in her jaw jumped. Slowly, agonizingly, she lowered the shotgun by two inches.
"He's right," Claire whispered, her voice trembling with cold fury. "Dying is too easy for you. You're going to spend the rest of your miserable life in a maximum-security cell, watching everything you built turn to ash."
Evelyn looked between them, her breathing ragged, a dark, manic smile slowly returning to her blood-smeared lips.
"You think they can hold me?" Evelyn whispered. "You think a cage can hold a Vance?"
Before Ethan could react, Evelyn threw herself backward off the catwalk, plummeting thirty feet down into the roaring, swollen torrent of the mountain sluice below.
A violent splash echoed through the concrete cavern.
Ethan scrambled to the edge of the pit, looking down. The white foam of the raging river churned violently between the jagged rocks, sweeping everything downstream toward the black abyss of Pike Lake.
There was no sign of Evelyn. Only the dark water rushing into the storm.
***
Forty minutes later, the rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle.
Ethan and Claire sat on the rear bumper of a state police cruiser parked at the base of the Blackwood Ridge. Lily was wrapped in three clean, warm emergency blankets, sleeping soundly in Claire’s arms, her tiny chest rising and falling in rhythmic peace.
Paramedics were tending to the laceration on Ethan’s shoulder, wrapping thick white gauze around his torso. Across the gravel staging area, six county ambulances and a dozen police cruisers had their red and blue lights flashing against the wet pine trees. Search-and-rescue divers were launching motorized zodiac rafts into the flooded river, sweeping powerful spotlights across the churning surface of the lake.
Sheriff Higgins—a burly, gray-haired man with exhausted eyes—walked over to them, holding two steaming paper cups of black coffee.
"River's running at eight thousand cubic feet per second," Higgins said quietly, handing a cup to Ethan. "No one survives that fall, Ethan. The current would have driven her straight into the subterranean turbine intake at the old dam. Divers are sweeping the grates now. It’s just a matter of recovery."
Ethan took a slow sip of the coffee. It burned his tongue, but he barely felt it. He looked down at Lily. Her soft, pink face was completely untroubled by the nightmare they had just survived.
"We want to go home, Sheriff," Claire said, her voice hollow and exhausted.
"I know, Claire," Higgins sighed, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. "My deputies have already secured your cabin. We replaced the broken locks, boarded the nursery window, and two armed units will be stationed at your driveway around the clock until the coroner confirms the recovery."
An hour later, an unmarked police cruiser drove them back up the winding gravel road to their mountain home.
The cabin was quiet. The front porch light cast a warm, yellow pool onto the wet gravel. Two state trooper cruisers were parked by the gate, their engines idling in the dark.
Ethan helped Claire out of the car, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist as she carried Lily. They walked up the wooden porch steps. Ethan unlocked the heavy oak door, pushing it open.
The warm air of the cabin greeted them. The smell of cedar, coffee, and home.
Claire walked straight into the nursery, gently laying Lily down into the freshly prepared bassinet they had moved into the master bedroom. She pulled the warm blanket up to the baby's chin, collapsing into the armchair beside the crib, burying her face in her hands as silent, releasing tears finally spilled over.
Ethan stood in the doorway, watching his wife and daughter. A profound, overwhelming wave of relief washed through his battered body.
It was over. The nightmare was finally over.
Ethan walked back out into the living room to lock the front deadbolt.
He reached for the brass latch.
Then, his eyes caught the small wooden console table by the front door.
Sitting neatly in the center of the table was a silver baby rattle—the antique, engraved rattle that had belonged to Ethan when he was an infant. The rattle that had been locked in the safety deposit box in Mercer County.
Beside the rattle was a small, high-end audio monitor base station, its green power light glowing steadily.
From the small speaker on the console, a voice crackled through the static.
A voice coming from inside the cabin.
*“Did you check the closet in the attic, Ethan?”* Evelyn’s melodic whisper drifted through the speaker, perfectly calm, entirely dry. *“You always forget to look up.”*
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Above Ethan’s head, from the dark, unlit square of the ceiling attic hatch directly above Lily’s crib in the next room...
A heavy, wet drop of blood dripped through the crack, splashing softly onto the hardwood floor.
