My mother called my six-year-old daughter “a burden” at Christmas dinner, so I took her presents and walked out—but by New Year’s, Grandma was begging for a second chance.

"Lily, down!" I screamed, lunging across the rug and throwing my body over her.

Campbell bolted upright despite his wounds, pulling a Colt .45 from beneath his quilt. "Emma, the cellar root hatch! Under the kitchen pantry!"

He fired three rounds through the shattered window frame. Outside, someone grunted, followed by the heavy staccato crack of suppressed automatic fire chewing through the exterior pine siding. Splinters rained down like shrapnel.

I snatched the steel lockbox from the cavity, grabbed Lily by the waist, and crawled through the billowing white fog of tear gas toward the kitchen. The fumes hit my eyes and throat like acid, blinding me, mucus and tears streaming down my face. Lily began to cough hysterically, buried beneath my wool coat.

Campbell was on his knees now, firing methodically into the doorway. "Go, Emma! I'll hold them off!"

"I'm not leaving you!" I shouted, kicking the pantry door open and yanking up the iron ring of the trapdoor.

"You have to!" Campbell roared, blood flecking his teeth. "You have the ledger! The girl is your life now, not mine! Move!"

A heavy boot kicked the front door completely off its hinges. In the blinding smoke, the silhouette of Hoffman’s point man appeared, his weapon leveled directly at Campbell’s chest.

Campbell fired. The operative dropped, but a second figure fired a burst that caught Campbell square in the chest. He collapsed backward onto the stone hearth, his pistol clattering away across the floorboards.

I didn't scream. I couldn't. The cold numbness of absolute survival took over.

I shoved Lily down into the darkness of the root cellar, threw the heavy steel box down after her, and dropped through the opening. As my feet hit the dirt floor four feet below, I reached up and slammed the oak trapdoor shut, throwing the iron slide bolt into place from underneath.

Above us, heavy footsteps pounded on the pine boards directly overhead. Then came the unmistakable click of a silver-headed cane against the timber.

"Emma," Hoffman’s voice drifted down through the floorboards, muffled but razor-sharp. "Campbell was a brave fool. You don't have to be. Slide the box up, and you and the child can walk onto the road alive."

I didn't answer. In the pitch black of the root cellar, I felt Lily’s trembling hand find mine.