Chapter 14 - The Night the Power Died
Everyone froze.
The pounding came again.
Three hard blows.
Then a weak voice.
“Emily!”
Rosa stared at the floor.
“Ellis?”
Emily started crying harder.
Daniel’s face changed.
Only for a second.
Grace saw it.
“You said you didn’t know where he was,” she whispered.
Emily looked at her. “I didn’t. I came here because he sent me a message from an old account. I thought Daniel—”
“Stop talking,” Daniel snapped.
The gun came up.
Rosa moved first.
She grabbed the lamp from the side table and threw it.
Daniel flinched.
The bulb shattered against the wall.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Grace dropped to the floor.
A gunshot cracked through the house.
Emily screamed.
Rosa slammed into someone.
Furniture overturned.
Grace crawled toward the pounding.
Her palms found a rug.
She pulled it back and felt metal under her fingers.
A cellar hatch.
“Grace!” Daniel shouted.
She found the latch.
Locked.
Another shot.
A window broke.
Then silence.
Grace heard Daniel breathing somewhere near the front room.
She also heard Rosa whisper, “Come on, come on…”
A phone flashlight clicked on.
Emily stood near the kitchen, one hand pressed to her shoulder. Blood seeped between her fingers.
Rosa had Daniel’s gun.
Daniel was gone.
“Where?” Grace asked.
“Back door.” Rosa was breathing hard. “He ran.”
Grace pointed at the hatch. “Key.”
Emily fumbled inside her coat and handed over a small brass key.
Stamped 214.
Rosa stared. “The locker key.”
“No,” Emily said. “Same system. Daniel bought old bus lockers at auction for storage. He likes keys because they don’t leave logs.”
Grace almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
Rosa unlocked the hatch.
The smell that rose from below was damp concrete and sweat.
Ellis Ward lay on a thin mattress in the cellar, wrists chained to a pipe.
Alive.
Barely.
Grace climbed down two steps before Rosa stopped her.
“Stay.”
“I can help.”
“You are eight months pregnant and have been almost hit by a train today.”
“Yesterday.”
“That makes it better?”
“No.”
Emily slid down the wall, still holding her shoulder.
Grace took out her phone.
One bar.
She called 911.
Before the dispatcher answered, the farmhouse lights flashed on.
Then off.
Then on again.
Outside, an engine roared.
Rosa ran to the broken window.
Daniel’s SUV was tearing across the field toward the road.
But he wasn’t alone.
A second figure sat in the passenger seat.
Silver hair.
May you like
Victoria.
And in her lap was the hard drive.
