Chapter 10 - The Turning Tide
Graham whirled toward the window, distracted by the sudden arrival of the vehicles.
In that split second of hesitation, I lunged forward with everything I had.
I swung the heavy steel flashlight with all the force of my body, striking Graham across the wrist.
The revolver fired—*BANG!*—the bullet tearing through the ceiling plaster as the gun flew from his grasp and skittered across the floor into the roaring fireplace.
Graham roared in rage, grabbing me by the hair and slamming me into the heavy oak table. Plates and glass shattered. Pain flared across my shoulder blades, but adrenaline numbed the blow.
I grabbed a broken ceramic shard from the table and drove it backward into his forearm.
Graham shrieked, clutching his bleeding arm and stumbling backward. "You psycho bitch!"
Before he could recover, the front door was kicked off its hinges.
Three men in tactical gear stormed the cabin, submachine guns raised, their tactical lights blinding us both.
"Down! On the floor! Hands where we can see them!"
Behind the tactical team walked Detective Vance—his coat clean, his expression cold and calculating, utterly detached from the sympathetic officer he had pretended to be at the diner.
And right behind him walked the elderly stranger from the tavern. Julian.
"Good evening, Elena," Julian said softly, leaning on a silver-topped walking cane. "You look remarkably like your father when he was cornered."
Graham scrambled up from the floor, his shirt soaked in blood. "Julian! She’s here! The deeds are halfway burned, but we can force her to sign the remaining land allocations right now!"
Julian didn't look at Graham. He looked at Detective Vance.
"Marcus," the old man said calmly. "Clean this up."
Without a word, Detective Vance raised his suppressed pistol and fired twice into Graham Calder’s chest.
*Thump. Thump.*
Graham gasped, his eyes widening in total disbelief. He looked down at the dark crimson flowers blooming across his white shirt, then collapsed facedown onto the timber floor, motionless.
My breath hitched in my throat. Graham—my husband, my tormentor, my would-be executioner—was dead in a pool of his own blood.
Julian stepped closer, his cane clicking softly against the hardwood. "Your husband was getting sloppy, Elena. Using cheap poison in a public tavern. Endangering my operation with loud confessions. He outlived his usefulness the moment he failed to get your signature quietly."
"You won't get this land," I said through gritted teeth, backing away toward the rear window. "The feds know about the Macau accounts. They know about the mining permits."
Julian smiled—a cold, terrifying smile that held decades of patient, calculated malice.
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"The feds know only what Marcus files in the official report, my dear," Julian murmured. "And according to tonight’s report, your deranged husband murdered you here on Blackwood Ridge before dying in a shootout with local law enforcement."
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