Chapter 47 - The Broken Safe in Sector 4
Vance looked feral. His designer suit had been shredded into rags, his right eye was swollen shut from the crash or a beating, and in his right hand he held an eighteen-inch industrial pry-bar, dripping with fresh grease from the catwalk gears.
"You took everything, Rachel," Vance hissed, ignoring Harris, who lay gasping for breath beneath his boots. His swollen eye twitched maniacally toward me. "Dad said you were a non-entity! He said you'd sign the waiver! And then you went to the vault!"
"Drop the bar, Vance," I said, raising the Glock with both hands, aiming directly at the center of his chest. "You killed Melissa. You left her in the crawlspace under the garage floor."
Vance laughed—a dry, rattling, broken sound that bounced off the corrugated steel roof. "Melissa was a rat! She gave you the keycards! She thought you were going to save her! Nobody saves anybody in this family, Rachel! Dad taught us that when we were eight years old!"
Underneath Vance’s boot, Harris reached for his ankle holster.
"Vance, down!" I yelled.
*Crack!*
The gunshot inside the concrete chamber was ear-splitting. Harris fired blindly through the leather of his holster, the slug tearing through Vance’s left calf. Vance screamed, swinging the heavy pry-bar downward in a vicious, desperate arc that struck Harris squarely across the helmet, knocking him limp across the turbine floor.
Vance dropped to one knee, clutching his bleeding leg, breathing heavily like a wounded animal. He looked up at me, the Glock unwavering in my hands.
"Shoot me, then," Vance spat, blood bubbling on his split lip. "Do it! Shoot your brother! But you don't even know what's in the safe at Sector 4, do you? You think this was about money? Dad didn't build that bunker under the garage for cash, Rachel. He built it for the samples."
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My finger tightened on the trigger. "What samples, Vance?"
"The ones mother died testing," Vance whispered with a sickening grin.
