Chapter 34 - The Breached Hearth
Before I could grab her arm, the ceiling above the central chamber groaned. A circle of stone four feet wide dropped down with a deafening crash, shattering on the flagstones below.
A thick plume of pulverized mortar and gray dust billowed out, illuminated instantly by the harsh tactical beams of high-powered weapon lights shining down from the living room floor above.
"Clear!" a voice barked from above. It wasn't my father. It wasn't the local locksmith. It was the clipped, military cadence of a professional breach team.
"They’re inside the lower chamber!" another voice yelled through the opening. "Two heat signatures on the thermal! One mobile, one stationary near the electrical main!"
"Deploy the canisters," came the cold command from above.
"Maeve, move!" Constance shrieked.
She didn't pull the lever. Instead, she threw her entire body weight against an iron hand-wheel mounted to the drainage valve beside the vault door. A screech of rusted gears echoed through the pipes, and a torrent of icy black water roared out of the drainage sluice, flooding the floor in seconds, surging past our knees with the force of an alpine spring.
Above us, two black metal cylinders fell through the breach, clattering against the wet stones. A hiss of white, pressurized gas began venting into the enclosed space—tear gas mixed with a chemical aerosol that immediately burned the back of my throat like liquid lye.
"Coughing, I grabbed Constance by the collar of her woolen coat. "The drainage tunnel! Now!"
"The water will carry you down to the lower gorge!" she coughed violently, her eyes streaming with tears from the gas. "The box, Maeve! Protect the box!"
I hooked the strap of the steel ammunition box over my shoulder. With my other arm, I dragged Constance through the rising water toward the narrow fissure where the Western Electric phone hung.
The beam of a weapon light swept across the water, catching my face in a blinding white glare.
"Freeze! Step away from the conduit!"
A man dressed in sterile, unmarked tactical gear dropped through the hole in the ceiling, landing with a splash in the knee-deep water. His rifle was raised, leveled directly at my chest. Behind him, another figure lowered himself down through the breach on a tactical rope.
It was my father.
Arthur Vance looked half-dead. His expensive gray overcoat was ripped at the shoulder, covered in white plaster dust, and his face was gaunt, his eyes wide with a frantic, unhinged terror.
May you like
"Arthur!" Constance screamed, spitting water. "You coward! You brought them into my house!"
"Shut up, old woman!" Arthur shouted, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Clara signed the papers! They have the lien! If we don't give them the bonds, they're going to burn the house down with all of us inside it! Maeve, give him the box! Just give him the damn box!"
