Chapter 19
The crawlspace beneath the caretaker's cabin was barely two feet high, smelling of damp earth, rotted cedar, and ozone. Ryan crawled on his elbows, the captured submachine gun resting across his forearms, every muscle in his back screaming from tension. Behind him, Emily kept Sarah quiet with rhythmic pats on her back.
Lily moved ahead like a ghost, completely silent, sliding through the dirt until she reached a square iron trapdoor set into the subflooring above them.
She turned to Ryan and raised two small fingers.
Two guards.
Ryan slid forward, gently setting Lily behind him. He reached up, feeling the edges of the trapdoor. It was unlatched, resting on an old wooden frame. Through the half-inch gap between the floorboards, bright fluorescent light spilled into the dirt crawlspace, accompanied by the low hum of computer fans and the static of tactical radios.
"...bedroom was cleared, ma'am," Marcus’s voice crackled through a high-frequency receiver above. "Ryan took the tunnel. He’s got the girl with him."
A sharp, elegant voice answered inside the room. It was unmistakably Evelyn Cross.
"Then you have failed your primary directive, Marcus," Evelyn said, her tone smooth, polished, and utterly devoid of warmth. "You were supposed to execute him quietly in his sleep and make it look like a heart attack from his father's condition. Now you've turned the manor into a warzone. The local authorities have already received three noise complaints."
"I have the perimeter sealed," Marcus growled back through the radio. "They can't get past the gatehouse. I’ll flush them into the open within ten minutes."
"You have five minutes," Evelyn responded coldly, the sound of ice clinking in a whiskey glass echoing clearly. "Before I call the district attorney and report that Ryan went psychotic, murdered his family, and had to be put down by my private security team. Do not disappoint me twice in one night."
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Ryan’s eyes locked with Emily’s in the shadows beneath the floorboards. There was no more waiting.
Ryan braced his back against the floor of the crawlspace, planted his combat boots beneath the trapdoor, and drove upward with every ounce of strength in his body.
