Chapter 45 - The Town on the High Pass
The heavy silence that followed the steam blast was broken only by the panting of our ragged breath and the steady, eternal roar of the underground river below.
Kane lay on the metal deck, his clothes scorched, his face blistered by the steam, gasping like a fish pulled from water. Cole stood over him, his rifle barrel resting precisely between the director’s eyes.
"Move," Cole said, his voice deadly calm, "and I’ll let this mountain take you without a trace."
Jason pulled himself up against the railing, clutching his bleeding arm, a ragged but triumphant grin cutting through the soot on his face. "Told you I wasn't afraid of that cable, Cole."
"You're an idiot," Cole said, though he reached out with his free hand and pulled his brother into a fierce, bone-crushing embrace. "Don't ever do that again."
Twenty minutes later, Miller arrived with two deputies and heavy steel flex-cuffs. Together, we dragged Kane and his surviving operative back through the subterranean tunnels, back through the cold concrete vaults of Sector Seven, and up the iron ladder into the blinding daylight.
When my head breached the surface of the crater, the roar that greeted us was deafening.
The storm had broken. The clouds had parted, revealing a brilliant, piercing blue winter sky over Blackwood Peak. And surrounding the perimeter of my ruined lodge were not federal agents or tactical teams, but hundreds of people.
Loggers in flannel and heavy canvas jackets, miners with soot-stained faces, shopkeepers from town, waitresses from the diner, ranchers who had driven their cattle haulers fifty miles across icy roads—all standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind Frank’s barricade. Parked right in the center were three satellite broadcast trucks from Denver news stations, their massive dish antennas locked onto the sky, broadcasting live to the world.
As Miller shoved Director Kane into the back of a county squad car in full view of the cameras, a thunderous cheer erupted from the crowd.
Frank walked up to me, his heavy hand coming down gently on my shoulder. His eyes were shining with unshed tears. "You did it, Rebecca. The governor just signed an emergency injunction halting all federal energy seizures in the county. The state attorney general is on the line right now demanding Kane's immediate transfer to state custody for corporate sabotage and attempted domestic terrorism."
May you like
I looked across the charred remains of my land. The lodge I had built was gone, reduced to ash and twisted steel. But as I looked at the faces of the people standing guard around us, I realized something that no corporate contract or fire could ever take away:
I hadn't just built a building on this mountain. I had built a home. And the people of this valley had become my family.
