Chapter 7 - The Fire Break
The heavy iron grate slammed directly into Victor’s face with a sickening, wet crunch of splintering bone.
Victor let out a muffled scream as he was hurled backward into a glass display shelf, sending hundreds of glass panes crashing down upon his body. His gun flew from his hand, sliding across the dirt floor.
Vance gasped in shock, spinning his revolver toward the opening.
Before he could pull the trigger, I scrambled out of the pipe like a madwoman, sweeping the twelve-inch rusted iron wrench upward in a brutal, blinding arc.
The heavy iron tool struck Vance squarely across the wrist.
SNAP.
Vance screamed in agony as the bones in his forearm shattered. His revolver flew from his nerveless fingers, smashing through a lower greenhouse windowpane into the dark garden outside.
He stumbled back, clutching his broken, deformed wrist to his chest, his eyes wide with absolute, disbelieving horror as he stared at me.
I didn't look like the quiet, timid wife he had beaten into the bathroom mirror an hour ago.
My face was smeared with dark blood and tunnel soot. My cardigan was torn to shreds, my hands wrapped in gore-soaked wool bandages, my eyes burning with a terrifying, unyielding fury that made Vance retreat three paces until his back hit the glass wall.
"Sarah..." he gasped, his voice trembling, tears of agony spilling down his cheeks. "Sarah, please... let's talk about this... we're family..."
"We were never family, Vance," I rasped, stepping forward, raising the heavy iron wrench high above my head. "You were just my warden."
Before I could strike, the sky above the greenhouse erupted into blinding, terrifying light.
A massive, high-intensity flashbang grenade detonated thirty yards away on the main lawn with a deafening BOOM-CRACK that shook the glass panes in their iron frames.
"FEDERAL AGENTS! ON THE GROUND! DON'T MOVE!"
The thunderous roar of automatic rifle fire tore through the evening air as Marcus’s tactical team shattered the main security gates, breaching the estate from three directions simultaneously.
A second flashbang went off inside the main house dining room, sending the muffled screams of the board members echoing across the dark grounds. Glass shattered across the main facade as tactical operators executed a dynamic breach through the floor-to-ceiling French doors.
Vance collapsed onto his knees in the dirt, covering his ears, weeping hysterically as the terrifying reality of a federal tactical raid descended upon his home.
The heavy glass doors of the greenhouse were kicked off their hinges with explosive force.
Four black-clad tactical operators, their rifle-mounted lights cutting through the dust-motes like blinding laser beams, flooded into the building.
"CLEAR LEFT! CLEAR RIGHT!" a deep voice roared through a tactical mask.
The lead operator stepped over Victor’s groaning, bloody form, his rifle trained on Vance’s chest. Behind him stepped Marcus, his helmet visor raised, his face pale as chalk beneath the high-intensity lights.
Marcus’s eyes swept across the room until they landed on me—standing in the center of the shattered glass, covered in blood, holding a rusted iron wrench in my ruined hands.
"Sarah!" Marcus dropped his weapon to his chest sling and sprinted forward, catching me in his arms just as my legs finally gave out.
I fell against his heavy tactical vest, the iron wrench slipping from my numb fingers, clattering onto the dirt floor.
"I got you, kiddo," Marcus choked out, his voice cracking with emotion as he wrapped his thick arms around my shoulders, holding my head against his chest. "I got you. You're safe. It's over."
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"The fob..." I whispered, my voice barely a thread, my vision dimming into gray as the adrenaline finally left my bloodstream. "The fob was broken, Marcus..."
"It worked enough," Marcus whispered back, kissing my hair as two tactical medics rushed into the greenhouse with trauma kits. "It worked enough to tear their world down."
