Chapter 38 - Bloodline Extortion
The metallic shriek of hydraulic pressure biting into the heavy steel frame of the patio door reverberated through the ground floor.
Jared didn't hesitate. He raised the semi-automatic, centered the red dot of the reflex sight on the hydraulic piston of the breaching tool through the bullet-resistant polycarbonate glass, and squeezed the trigger twice.
*CRACK. CRACK.*
The specialized glass spiderwebbed instantly into a frosty white mosaic, absorbing the rounds, but the high-velocity kinetic force punched straight through the polymer core, shattering the high-pressure hydraulic line of the spreader. A jet of dark, pressurized oil sprayed across the operative holding the tool, sending him stumbling back into the mud with a strangled curse.
Marcus didn't flinch. He simply stepped back two paces, drawing a suppressed handgun from his tactical holster with fluid, terrifying muscle memory.
"Stubborn to the end," Marcus said calmly.
Jared dropped low, ducking behind the kitchen’s granite island as two rounds punched through the upper pane of the door, showering the tile floor in hardened laminate shards. The sound was muffled—*thwip, thwip*—punctuated by the sharp impact of lead burying itself into the solid oak cabinetry above Jared's head.
Jared pulled his emergency cell phone from his tactical vest. The signal bar showed a red cross. A localized signal jammer. Marcus had brought professional-grade equipment; the cellular towers were blanked out within a half-mile radius, and the severed landline meant no call had gone out to Sheriff Higgins.
He was entirely on his own.
His heart hammered against his ribs, not with panic, but with the cold, crystalline clarity that comes when a man realizes there is no compromise left on earth. Noah and Ellie were upstairs behind four inches of steel-reinforced solid wood, but if Marcus breached the house and set a fire, that safe room would become a furnace.
*I have to take the fight outside,* Jared thought.
He reached into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, flicking the secondary toggle for the property's agricultural irrigation pumps—a system he had upgraded the previous spring to protect his sprawling five-acre parcel from wildfire.
Across the back lawn, four high-output industrial brass water cannons engaged simultaneously with a violent, mechanical hiss. Thousands of gallons of pressurized well water erupted into the darkness, churning the patio and the perimeter into a blinding, torrential maelstrom.
The sudden deluge blinded the second operative standing on the patio steps, knocking him off balance on the slick, mud-slicked flagstones.
Jared used the split second of chaos. Instead of engaging through the back door, he sprinted down the hallway toward the mudroom, threw open the heavy steel access hatch to the basement crawlspace, and dropped into the darkness beneath the floorboards.
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He knew every joist, every pipe, and every concealed exit of the home he had built with his own two hands. While Marcus believed he was holding a barricaded family hostage from the patio, Jared was already moving beneath their feet, hunting the hunters.
***
