Chapter 44 - Bloodline in the Shadow
The sleet had turned into a torrential mountain storm by the time Ben’s truck cleared the outer barricades of the state route leading up to Blackwood Orchard.
The yellow police tape had been torn down, flapping wildly from the twisted branches of the old cedar trees lining the long, serpentine driveway. Just as Agent Ross had warned, the perimeter floodlights were dead. The house rose out of the blackness like a jagged tooth, silhouetted only by the violent flashes of November lightning tearing across the valley.
"Stay in the truck, Emily," Ben said, shifting the transmission into park fifty yards down the drive, shielding our headlights behind a dense thicket of overgrown hemlocks. He reached beneath the passenger seat and pulled out a heavy steel crowbar and a high-powered tactical flashlight. "Ross called the state police tactical unit, but they’re still twenty minutes out due to the ice on the pass. I’m going in alone."
"I am not sitting in this truck while Chloe destroys whatever evidence remains," I said, reaching into the glove box and pulling out the spare flashlight. "Arthur said she’s in the wine cellar. If she touches the breaker box, this whole place goes up."
"Emily—"
"Ben, Julian Sterling’s son was seven years old," I said, looking directly into his dark, steady eyes. "He spent his last moments in that cellar. I spent twenty-six years being told I was worthless, that I had to step aside for Chloe, that I had to give up my wedding, my dignity, and my peace to protect this family's name. This isn't Arthur's house. It’s a tomb, and I’m finishing this."
Ben stared at me for three long seconds. He saw the resolve in my face—the same resolve that had carried me through the humiliation of my engagement party, through the deposition, and through the revelation of our family’s monstrous history. He nodded once, reached across, and squeezed the back of my neck.
"We stick together," he said. "If I say run, you run."
"Deal."
We stepped out into the freezing deluge, the mud sucking at our boots as we crossed the ruined lawn. The front doors of the manor hung open, creaking mournfully on their heavy brass hinges as the draft sucked through the cavernous foyer.
Inside, the house was unrecognizable. The federal technicians had pulled up half the parquet flooring in the formal dining room, exposing the cracked sub-floor and the black polyethylene sheeting beneath. The air was thick, heavy, and sulfurous—the sharp, unmistakable reek of mercaptan, the chemical added to natural gas to signal a catastrophic leak.
"Don't touch any light switches," Ben warned in a low whisper, keeping his flashlight beam aimed strictly at the floorboards. "One spark and the ambient concentration in here will ignite."
From deep beneath the floorboards came the rhythmic, metallic scrape of an iron spade striking stone.
*Clang. Clang. Clang.*
We moved silently down the main corridor toward the kitchen pantry, where the heavy oak door leading to the wine cellar stood ajar. A faint, flickering yellow light danced against the stone steps—the glow of a portable work lamp.
We descended the narrow stone stairs, our breath frosting in the frigid, gas-laden subterranean air.
At the far end of the arched limestone cellar, standing before a partially dismantled brick wall, was my sister.
Chloe was drenched in sweat and filthy with soot. Her designer wool coat was discarded in the mud at her feet, and her hands, usually adorned with manicured acrylics and diamond rings, were raw, bleeding, and caked in black mortar. Beside her sat an open duffel bag, half-filled with waterlogged ledgers and small brass deposit boxes.
"Where is it?" she was muttering to herself, her voice cracked, high-pitched, slipping into hysteria as she swung a small mason’s hammer against the mortar. "Where did he put the Cayman routing slips? He told Marcus they were behind the 1985 foundation plaque!"
"They aren't there, Chloe," I said, stepping off the bottom stair into the cellar.
Chloe whipped around, the hammer slipping from her bloody fingers and clattering against the damp flagstones. Her eyes were wild, bloodshot, surrounded by dark, hollow circles. In the harsh yellow beam of her work lamp, all the polished glamour, all the radiant, entitled beauty she had weaponized against me my entire life was completely gone. She looked like a feral animal trapped in a corner.
"Emily?" she gasped, her chest heaving as she backed away toward the open wall. "How... how did you get past Marcus's drivers?"
"Marcus's drivers were arrested at the county line twenty minutes ago, Chloe," Ben said, stepping forward, his broad frame blocking the cellar exit. "The state police are three miles out. It’s over."
"No! No, it’s not over!" Chloe screamed, her voice ricocheting off the damp stone arches. She lunged forward, grabbing the heavy iron crowbar resting against her duffel bag, pointing it at us with shaking hands. "You ruined everything, Emily! You and your pathetic, boring, little self-righteous life! If you had just let me have the wedding! If you had just let Arthur sign the lake property over to me! We would have been in Europe before any of this came out!"
"Arthur was never giving you the lake property, Chloe," I said, walking slowly toward her, ignoring the weapon in her hands. "He knew you weren't pregnant. He knew you faked the medical records. He was using you as a distraction while he arranged for Marcus to blow this house off the face of the earth."
Chloe froze, her jaw slackening. "What... what did you say?"
May you like
"Smell the air, Chloe," Ben commanded, shining his light toward the overhead pipes running along the ceiling joists. A thick copper line had been severed cleanly near the main shutoff valve, hissing almost imperceptibly into the enclosed space. "Arthur didn't send you here to get the bonds. He knew you’d come for the money. He rigged this cellar to take you down with the evidence."
***
