Chapter 7 - The Confrontation in the Cellar
Vance lunged forward, slamming his shoulder into the primary guard standing to Christian's right. The force of the impact sent both men crashing into the heavy wine racks, sending dozens of glass bottles smashing onto the concrete floor in a roaring cascade of red wine and shattered glass.
Guns barked.
The deafening boom of gunfire inside the enclosed stone space shattered my ears. Dust and stone chips rained down from the ceiling.
"Jennifer, get behind the door!" Vance screamed, drawing his secondary sidearm and firing two rapid shots that dropped another guard near the tunnel entrance.
Christian scrambled backward, grabbing Martha and using her as a human shield as he retreated down the narrow corridor toward the upper stairs. "Kill them! Kill them both!" he shouted to his remaining men.
I dived behind the heavy steel door of the vault as bullets pinged violently off the reinforced frame. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer, but my mind was laser-focused. I reached out, grabbed the blue master binder and the hard drives, and jammed them into my canvas backpack.
"Walter!" I yelled, seeing the old man stranded in his wheelchair in the middle of the crossfire, trembling with shock.
I crawled through the shattered glass and red wine filling the floor, grabbed the handles of Walter's wheelchair, and hauled him backward into the safety of the vault just as a bullet struck the wall where his head had been a second earlier.
"Thank... thank you, child," Walter gasped, clutching his chest, his eyes wide with horror as he looked at his son retreating into the dark. "I was... so blind..."
"Hold on, Walter," I whispered, wedging his wheelchair against the far wall.
Outside the vault, Vance was a whirlwind of violent precision. Moving through the cloud of concrete dust, he disarmed the third guard with a brutal wrist lock, threw him into the stone pillar, and neutralized the fourth with a close-range shot to the shoulder.
Within thirty seconds, the crossfire stopped. The only sounds remaining were the dull echoes of alarm sirens starting up on the surface levels above and the heavy breathing of wounded men on the floor.
Vance stepped back into the doorway of the vault, his coat torn, blood dripping from a shallow graze on his cheek.
"You good?" he asked, breathing hard.
"We have Walter," I said, standing up. "And we have the ledger."
"Christian escaped up the main stairs," Vance said, reloading his magazine with practiced speed. "He's going for the main house. He knows he's exposed now—he's going to try to burn the place down or destroy the primary servers before we can broadcast the files."
"Not while I'm still breathing," Walter rasped, his hand reaching out to grab Vance's arm. "The main servers... are in my upper office. My master keycard... in my pocket... it can lock down the entire digital grid from the inside."
Walter reached into his robe, pulling out an obsidian-black keycard marked with the Lawson crest. He held it out to me.
"Take it, Jennifer," Walter choked out, tears finally breaking through his aged face. "Save my grandson's legacy. Stop my son... before he destroys us all."
I took the keycard. "Vance, can you secure Walter and Martha?"
"Martha!" Vance called out into the dark hallway. "Step out with your hands up!"
Martha slowly emerged from behind a wine rack, sobbing uncontrollably, her hands raised. "I didn't know... I swear to God, Jennifer, I didn't know he was hurting Walter!"
"Stay here with your husband, Martha," I said sternly. "If you try to touch those radio alarms, Vance won't hesitate. Do you understand?"
She nodded furiously, dropping to her knees beside Walter's wheelchair, weeping and holding his hand.
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"Vance, we go to the upper office," I said, looking toward the dark stairs leading up to the main mansion. "We lock down the servers and broadcast the files to the Federal Prosecutor now."
"Right behind you, Mrs. Lawson," Vance said, his eyes burning with deadly purpose. "Let's finish this."
