Chapter 17 - The Road to Blackwood
The tunnel stretched nearly a half-mile beneath the rolling hills of the estate, eventually opening into an abandoned drainage culvert choked with dead vines and frozen briars.
We emerged into the biting midnight air, coughing out the damp sulfur dust of the old tunnels. Behind us, high on the crest of the hill, Sinclair Manor was silhouetted against a wall of roaring orange flame. The black-ops team had torched the house to incinerate any remaining physical files.
"My whole life," Hannah murmured, staring at the blazing horizon with wide, shell-shocked eyes. "Everything we grew up with... gone in thirty minutes."
"Possessions can burn," I told her, wrapping my tactical jacket around her slender, shivering shoulders. "You're alive. That's the only thing that matters."
Two miles down an overgrown logging road, hidden beneath a camouflage tarp in a dry creek bed, sat my contingency vehicle: an unmarked, mud-spattered 1998 Ford F-250 with heavy-duty off-road suspension and an untraceable military transponder. I had staged it three days ago, anticipating that my mother’s network wouldn't go down without a bloodbath.
I peeled back the tarp, threw Hannah into the passenger seat, and fired up the diesel engine. It roared to life with a deep, steady rumble.
As we hit the secondary county highway heading north toward Blackwood, the encrypted satellite phone on my dash buzzed once more.
I hit the speaker button. "Talk."
"You're out of the house. Good," the familiar, distorted voice replied. "The extraction team believed you died in the secondary explosion in the cellar, but they will confirm the lack of dental remains within two hours."
"Who the hell are you?" I demanded, navigating the truck through the winding mountain curves with the headlights dimmed to amber foggers. "You knew about the tunnel. You knew about the ridge."
There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line, punctuated by the mechanical hum of hospital equipment.
"I was the third signature on the manifest, Rebecca," the voice said, the distortion suddenly dropping away to reveal a wheezing, elderly rasp. "I am Marcus Vance. Your grandfather’s younger brother. The one they told you died in a helicopter crash during the Gulf War."
I nearly swerved the truck off the asphalt. "Uncle Marcus? You're alive?"
"Barely," he coughed bitterly. "Your mother didn't just frame you, child. When I refused to authorize the second shipment of Aegis barrels thirty years ago, she and the corrupt county syndicate cut the brakes on my transport. I survived in hiding, paralyzed from the waist down, watching that venomous serpent masquerade as a high-society philanthropist."
May you like
"We have the thumb drive," I said, glancing at Hannah, whose face was pale with shock. "The manifests, the offshore routing, the chemical batch numbers. Everything."
"Then you have the noose," Marcus whispered fiercely. "Drive to the decommissioned radar station at Blackwood Peak. Alvarez and a detachment of federal Marshals are already en route. But hurry, Rebecca. Your mother just called an emergency press conference at the municipal courthouse. She’s claiming you escaped from military custody, broke into the manor, and killed your own sister."