Chapter 17 - The Long Shadow of Sterling & Cross
The video ended with a sudden snap of static, leaving the room plunged into an agonizing quiet, broken only by the crackle of the birch logs.
I looked at the silver key. *Union Depository, Boston. Box 108.*
Boston was a four-hour drive through the blizzard. It was currently 2:45 AM. The Union Depository was one of the few private, high-security bullion and document vaults that operated on a twenty-four-hour basis for international maritime clients. If Julian Cross realized what Thomas had left behind, his agents would already be converging on that location.
I turned toward the couch. Maisie was sleeping peacefully, her eyelashes casting long shadows against her pale, innocent cheeks. Looking at her now, knowing the bizarre, tragic, and calculated truth of her conception, did not change a single beat of my heart. She had fallen into my arms when she was a red-faced, crying infant. I had kissed her scraped knees, taught her to read, held her hand through nightmares, and watched her stand tall against Arthur’s cruelty tonight.
She was my daughter. Not by blood, not by legal trickery, but by every breath I had drawn in her defense for nine years.
I stood up, took Grandfather’s heavy woolen hunting coat from the wall peg, and checked the wall-mounted gun cabinet. Inside hung a 12-gauge Remington shotgun and a box of heavy buckshot. I loaded the magazine with steady, deliberate movements, chambered a round, and engaged the safety.
I wasn't the terrified, submissive girl Arthur Vance had tried to mold into an obedient servant. I was the guardian Thomas Vance had forged in the fires of isolation.
Just as I reached to pack our supplies, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the front porch of the cabin.
The sound of snow crunching beneath a heavy boot.
My instincts screamed. I grabbed the shotgun, extinguished the oil lantern with a quick twist of the brass knob, and stepped behind the stone outcropping of the hearth, keeping Maisie positioned safely behind my back.
The cabin went dark, illuminated only by the dying orange glow of the embers.
A soft, polite knock sounded on the heavy oak door. Three taps, followed by a pause, then two more.
The secret cadence of the Vance inner circle.
May you like
"Leah," a calm, familiar woman's voice called through the solid timber, muffled by the howling wind. "Open the door, Leah. We don't have much time."
It was Rebecca.
