Chapter 21 - The Sniper's Eye
"Down! Get down right now!" Claire’s scream tore through the cabin like shrapnel.
Before my brain could process the command, my survival instincts took the wheel. I jerked the steering wheel hard to the right just as a supersonic crack shattered the night. The driver-side mirror exploded into a million silver shards, the heavy-caliber round punching cleanly through the A-pillar and blowing out the rear quarter glass with a deafening roar of pressurized wind and flying glass.
Emily shrieked from the backseat, curling into a tight ball on the floorboards as the icy mountain air surged into the car, carrying the bitter, synthetic tang of cordite.
"Don't brake! Keep moving, weave! Weave through the trees!" Claire hissed, ignoring the fresh agony tearing through her wounded shoulder. Her left hand reached over, pinning my thigh down against the accelerator while her eyes scanned the pitch-black ridgeline above us. "He’s elevated at three hundred yards. He has infrared. If you drive in a straight line, the next round goes through your skull!"
I stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The station wagon groaned, its worn suspension violently protesting as I fishtailed across the slush-covered asphalt. The road was a treacherous, unlit ribbon carving through the jagged spine of the mountains, bordered on one side by raw granite cliff faces and on the other by a sheer drop into black timber.
Another sharp crack echoed against the rock walls. The rear windshield vanished into a shower of tempered glass pebbles that pelted our necks like hail.
"Daddy! Mommy!" Emily sobbed hysterically, her small hands clawing at my seat.
"I’ve got you, baby, keep your head down!" I shouted, tears of terror and rage stinging my eyes. My knuckles were bone-white against the steering wheel. Up ahead, the yellow glare of our surviving headlight caught a split in the guardrail—an overgrown, unpaved logging trail plunging steep into the dense pine canopy.
"Take it!" Claire commanded, her voice dropping into that chilling, flat tactical cadence Helena Cross was born with. "Kill the headlights before you turn!"
I slammed the switch. Total darkness swallowed us at sixty miles per hour. For two terrifying seconds, we flew blind through the void. Then, praying to whatever god watched over broken families, I threw the wheel hard. The station wagon slammed into the ditch, bottoming out with a sickening scrape of metal, before launching into the narrow opening of the timber road. Tree branches whipped against the frame like skeletal claws, scratching the paint and snapping against the roof.
I feathered the brake, letting the car roll to a dead stop beneath a thick canopy of cedar and hemlock that completely blocked the sky. I cut the engine. The sudden silence was suffocating, broken only by the tick-tick-tick of the cooling radiator, the rush of the mountain wind, and the ragged, shallow breathing of the three of us trapped inside.
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Claire held the burner phone in her bloody fingers. The screen still flickered with the sniper’s video feed, now showing only the empty highway behind us.
"Claire," I whispered, my voice trembling as I turned to look at her in the shadows. "Who is Grandpa?"
