Chapter 8 - Trapped
"He knows," I whispered, the blood draining from my face. "He saw the safe sensor trip on his phone."
"Down the laundry chute," Eleanor commanded, grabbing my arm and pulling me out of the office into the hallway. "It leads straight to the underground heating tunnel connecting to the main cellar."
Heavy footsteps pounded up the exterior stairs.
*BANG.*
The front door of the carriage house splintered inward.
"Leo!" Marcus’s roar ripped through the house, stripped of all disguise, dripping with raw murderous rage. "I know you're in here, you miserable little rat! Come out and I'll make it quick!"
Eleanor shoved open the metal panel of the laundry chute on the hallway wall. "Jump, Leo. It drops twelve feet into a linen basket."
"Not without you!"
"I'm right behind you, go!" she ordered.
I squeezed my shoulders through the narrow square and slid down the smooth aluminum tube. My bruised ribs screamed as I crashed violently into a mountain of canvas bags and dirty sheets in the basement cellar.
A second later, Eleanor slid down after me, landing with a grunt that knocked the wind out of her.
Above us, in the chute, we heard the deafening crack of a gunshot. A bullet whistled down the metal shaft, sparking violently off the sides and burying itself into the concrete floor inches from Eleanor’s foot.
"Run!" she gasped.
We tore through the dark, damp brick tunnel beneath the earth, our footsteps echoing against the dripping pipes. Behind us, we heard Marcus's voice through his tactical radio:
*"Lock down the entire perimeter! Kill the power to the main house! The boy and the maid have the files. Put them down on sight!"*
Suddenly, the overhead bulbs in the tunnel died.
Total, pitch-black darkness swallowed us.
We stumbled through the blackness, guided only by Eleanor’s hand clutching my jacket, until my hands slammed into the heavy iron door of the manor's wine cellar. I shoved the bolt open and we spilled into the main house.
Silence. The heavy, suffocating silence of an ambush.
The backup generators hadn't kicked in. Marcus had severed the fuel lines. The house was freezing, the wind howling against the stained-glass windows of the dining room.
May you like
"Julian! Toby!" I shouted into the dark.
From the top of the grand staircase, Julian’s terrified whisper cut through the gloom: "Leo? We're in the upstairs armory. Marcus’s men are coming up the back garden!"
