Chapter 7 - BLOOD AND IRON3
"Wake up, Becca!" I shook my sister violently by the shoulder. "Becca, get up now!"
Becca bolted awake, her eyes wild with panic. "What? What happened? Is it Mom?"
"She’s outside," I said, grabbing her coat and forcing her arms into the sleeves. "Dad, where’s the back exit?"
Dad was already at the rear of the cabin, shoving a heavy wooden dress chest in front of the back door. "There is no back exit! It’s a sheer cliff face thirty feet behind the cabin! We’re boxed in!"
"You brought us to a dead end?!" I shouted, grabbing the shoulder of his coat. "Are you insane?!"
"It was supposed to be safe!" Dad snapped, racking his gun again. "I didn't know the drive was transmitting!"
Outside, the sound of heavy tires crunching over gravel brought the reality crashing down on us. The trucks had stopped in the clearing directly in front of the cabin. Doors slammed shut in rapid succession—four, five, six doors.
Then, a voice boomed out through a bullhorn—a voice that was terrifyingly familiar, clear, and absolutely calm.
"Kevin," my mother’s voice rang through the wooden walls of the cabin, echoing off the surrounding rock faces. "I know you're in there. I know you have the girls."
Becca covered her ears, tears streaming down her face. "Mom... please stop..."
"Eleanor!" Dad yelled back through the cracked glass of the window, keeping his body pressed against the log wall. "The local state police know this location! If a single shot is fired, tactical teams will be here in ten minutes!"
A cold, mocking laugh came back through the loudspeaker.
"Don't lie to me, Kevin," Mom replied smoothly. "You haven't called anyone. You can't. That drive in your bag contains enough evidence to put you in a federal penitentiary for the rest of your life, right alongside me. You aren't a victim here, darling. You were my CFO for six years."
I spun around to look at Dad. "What did she just say?"
Dad didn't look at me. His teeth were gritted, his knuckles white around the grip of his gun.
"He didn't tell you, did he, Zoe?" Mom’s voice continued, floating through the damp air. "He didn't tell you that he took a twenty percent cut of every property transaction we closed? He didn't tell you that the offshore accounts in San José weren't mine—they were his? He only went to the FBI when he realized the cartel was going to audit the books and find out he was stealing from them!"
The cabin seemed to tilt beneath my feet. Every piece of reality I had clung to for the last twelve hours crumbled into dust.
Dad wasn't a hero trying to save his family. He wasn't even a brave whistle-blower. He was a thief who had gotten caught by worse thieves, trying to use his wife, his daughters, and federal agents to burn down the board so he could run away with six hundred thousand dollars in a duffel bag.
"Dad?" I whispered, my voice barely audible. "Is that true?"
Dad’s single open eye flicked to me, cold and desperate. "She’s lying, Zoe. She’s trying to turn you against me."
"LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND TELL ME IT'S A LIE!" I screamed, stepping toward him.
"IT DOESN'T MATTER!" Dad roared back, his face twisting into something ugly and monstrous. "It doesn't matter what I did! If she takes that drive, she kills all three of us! Do you understand me?! She cannot leave witnesses who know about the cartel!"
"Kevin," Mom’s voice came again, closer now. "Send Zoe and Becca out. They have nothing to do with this. Leave the drive on the table, walk out with your hands up, and I will let the girls go."
Dad lifted his gun, pointing it straight at the front door. "If you step on that porch, Eleanor, I swear to God I’ll blow this hard drive to pieces! You’ll never get the encryption key!"
Silence fell over the clearing outside.
For ten agonizing seconds, the only sound was the wind howling through the pine trees.
Then came Mom’s response—not through the bullhorn, but in a low, cold tone that sounded right outside the front wall.
"Flank the sides," she commanded her men. "Break the windows. Leave Kevin alive if you can. Kill anyone who gets in the way."
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CRASH.
The glass windows on both sides of the cabin shattered simultaneously. Heavy glass rained onto the floorboards as black tear-gas canisters thumped onto the rug, immediately spewing thick, white, acrid smoke into the room.
