Chapter 4 - THE HUNT ON THE ESTATE
The dense woods at the edge of my five-acre estate were thick with pine, maple, and heavy autumn underbrush. Rain had begun to fall, a cold, steady drizzle that turned the soil into slippery mud and flattened my hair against my face.
Elena was panting heavily beside me, her bare, bruised feet bleeding from sharp twigs and jagged stones.
"I can't... I can't run anymore, Ms. Victoria," she gasped, collapsing against the trunk of a massive oak tree, her chest heaving violently.
"Yes, you can," I whispered, crouched low beside her, peering through the wet foliage back toward the smoking house. "We have to reach the Henderson property. The kids are there. If we can reach the perimeter wall, Mr. Henderson has armed private security."
Through the trees, fifty yards behind us, I saw the beams of heavy tactical flashlights cutting through the gray rain. Arthur’s two men were sweeping the tree line, moving in a coordinated tactical search grid.
"They have guns," Elena whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut. "They're going to catch us."
"They don't know these woods," I said, my voice dripping with cold determination. "I’ve played hide-and-seek out here with my children every weekend for three years. I know every ditch, every hollow tree, every stone."
I reached down and picked up two heavy, jagged rocks from the muddy creek bed at our feet.
"Stay here," I whispered to Elena. "Cover yourself with those wet pine branches. Don't make a single sound until I come back for you."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to take away their eyes."
I moved through the brush like a shadow, keeping low to the ground, utilizing the natural hollows of the terrain. The rain worked in my favor now, masking the sound of my footsteps and washing away our physical tracks in the mud.
The first guard—the one whose arm I had sliced in the kitchen—was moving cautiously through a cluster of birch trees, holding his suppressed firearm with his uninjured left hand while sweeping a high-lumen flashlight with his right.
I crept up behind a thick cluster of mountain laurel bushes just ten feet from his path.
I threw one of the heavy rocks deep into the brush thirty feet to his left.
THUD.
The guard whipped his body around, raising his weapon toward the noise. "I've got movement on the left flank!" he muttered into his shoulder radio.
While his back was turned to me, I stepped out from behind the bushes, grabbed a fallen, heavy pine branch from the ground, and swung it with maximum momentum directly into the side of his knee.
CRACK.
The joint snapped backward with a sickening pop. The guard let out a muffled scream, collapsing into the mud and dropping his flashlight and firearm.
Before he could recover, I drove my heel down onto his neck, knocking him unconscious, and scooped up his suppressed pistol and tactical flashlight from the mud.
I checked the magazine. Full. Twelve rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition.
"Target acquired," I whispered to myself, setting the safety off.
A hundred feet away, the second guard heard the scuffle. "Hicks? Hicks, report!" he called out, his flashlight beam rapidly bouncing through the trees toward my position.
I didn't run. I took cover behind a massive granite boulder, resting the cold steel barrel of the pistol against the wet stone to steady my hand.
The second guard stepped into the clearing, his flashlight beam sweeping across the unconscious body of his partner lying in the mud.
"What the hell..." he muttered, raising his rifle.
"Drop the weapon," I said, stepping out from behind the boulder, leveling the pistol directly at his chest.
The guard froze, his flashlight blinding my eyes for a fraction of a second. He let out a cold, arrogant smirk. "You won't shoot me, lady. You're a corporate executive. You don't have it in you."
"My husband is dead because of you," I said, my voice steady as stone. "My children were locked in a dark room. You have three seconds to drop that rifle before I put a bullet through your throat."
He saw my eyes. He saw that there was no fear left in me, no hesitation, no corporate executive—only a mother who had reached the absolute edge of human endurance.
Slowly, carefully, he unslung his rifle and dropped it into the wet mud at his feet, raising his hands into the air.
"Turn around. Face the tree," I ordered.
He obeyed instantly. I used the butt of the heavy flashlight to strike him precisely behind the ear, dropping him instantly beside his partner.
I gathered both weapons, racked the slides to ensure they were loaded, and sprinted back through the trees to where Elena was hidden.
"Elena! Get up!" I called out softly.
She emerged from beneath the pine branches, staring in absolute shock at the weapons in my hands. "You... you got them?"
"They're down," I said. "Now we finish this. Arthur is still at the house."
We marched back toward the edge of the woods. The rear of the mansion was heavily charred around the kitchen area, thick gray smoke continuing to rise into the rainy sky, but the fire had snuffed itself out against the heavy stone exterior walls.
Standing on the covered stone patio, holding his leather briefcase tightly against his coat, was Arthur Vance. He was pacing back and forth nervously, holding his cell phone to his ear, listening to the dialing tone over and over again.
"Come on, pick up... pick up..." he muttered frantically to himself.
"Looking for your security team, Arthur?"
My voice echoed across the open patio.
Arthur spun around so fast he nearly lost his footing on the wet flagstones.
I stepped out of the shadow of the rose arbor, holding the suppressed pistol pointed directly at his forehead. Elena stepped out behind me, holding a heavy iron lawn stake in her hands.
Arthur’s face went entirely white, his phone slipping from his fingers and smashing against the stone floor.
"Victoria..." he stammered, raising his hands in sheer terror. "Listen to me... we can work this out! The money... the fourteen million... I can transfer it back right now! I can give you full control of the offshore funds!"
"Where is Carla?" I demanded, taking three heavy steps toward him.
"She... she freed herself from the belt while I was in the house," Arthur stammered, his knees shaking. "She took the SUV! She fled down the main driveway five minutes ago!"
I didn't flinch. "She won't get far. The gate system is automatically locked when the fire alarm is triggered."
Suddenly, from the far end of the driveway, the loud, grinding sound of a heavy vehicle crashing into reinforced iron echoed across the estate, followed by the immediate, screaming sirens of six approaching police cruisers.
Red and blue lights began flashing through the trees near the front entrance.
Mr. Henderson had pressed his panic button. My children were safe. The police had arrived.
Arthur looked toward the flashing lights, then fell to his knees on the stone patio, sobbing like a coward. "Please, Victoria... don't shoot me... please!"
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I walked up to him, pressed the cold barrel of the pistol against his forehead for one terrifying second, and then brought the heavy butt of the handle down across his cheekbone, knocking him flat onto his back.
"That was for Richard," I said coldly.
