Chapter 4 - WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
Emergency lights flashed red along the ceiling.
Lawson moved before anyone else.
“Lock down the east wing.”
Prescott shouted into his radio.
“Backup generator!”
Nothing happened.
The mansion had three independent power systems.
All three were dead.
That was impossible.
Unless someone had planned for them.
Nora ran into the children’s suite.
Jonah had awakened.
Blythe was crying in the darkness.
The monitors were running on battery power, their screens glowing pale green.
Dr. Yates stood beside the medication cabinet.
“What’s happening?”
“No idea,” Nora said.
Lawson entered behind her.
A security guard shut the reinforced door.
Another explosion rolled through the building.
Jonah screamed.
Nora immediately lowered herself beside him.
“Look at me.”
His eyes were huge.
“What was that?”
“Something outside.”
“Bad guys?”
Nora hesitated.
“Yes.”
Lawson looked at her.
She did not apologize for telling the truth.
Jonah grabbed Blythe’s hand.
“I told you.”
“I know,” Nora said. “You were right.”
He started shaking.
Nora leaned closer.
“But listen carefully. Your dad has a lot of people whose only job is keeping you safe.”
Jonah looked toward Lawson.
“Are you scared?”
Lawson froze.
There were a thousand answers he could have given.
No.
Never.
Don’t worry.
Instead he sat beside his son.
“Yes.”
Jonah blinked.
“So am I.”
“That’s okay.”
“You said brave people aren’t scared.”
“I was wrong.”
Nora looked at Lawson.
He continued.
“Brave people are scared and still do what they have to do.”
Jonah thought about it.
Then nodded.
Another burst of noise came from outside.
Not an explosion this time.
Gunfire.
Muffled behind thick walls.
Blythe whimpered.
“I don’t like this story.”
Nora pulled the blanket around her.
“Neither do I.”
“When does it get happy?”
Nora looked toward Lawson.
“Not yet.”
Prescott entered through the inner door.
“We have a breach attempt near south service access.”
“How many?”
“At least eight.”
“Crosby?”
“Likely.”
“How did they kill power?”
“Someone accessed maintenance systems from inside.”
The room went silent.
Inside.
Lawson turned toward the staff.
Two nurses.
Dr. Yates.
Three security officers.
Nora.
Odessa.
Everyone looked at everyone else.
Prescott continued.
“We’re moving the children.”
“Where?”
“Lower safe room.”
“No,” Nora said.
Lawson’s head turned sharply.
Prescott looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“The safe room is underground?”
“Yes.”
“How do you ventilate it?”
“Independent air.”
“When was the system last serviced?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Nora pointed toward Blythe.
“She has almost no immune defense. If that air system hasn’t been medically filtered—”
“It has.”
“Are you sure?”
Prescott opened his mouth.
Stopped.
Nora looked at Lawson.
“Your enemies know your house.”
Lawson understood.
“If they accessed maintenance…”
“They may know where your safe rooms are too.”
Prescott swore softly.
“There’s another route,” Odessa said.
Everyone looked at her.
She stood near the wall, remarkably calm.
“The old service passage.”
Lawson frowned.
“That was sealed.”
“Not entirely.”
“Odessa.”
“Your grandfather had it built during Prohibition.”
“You knew?”
“I’ve cleaned this house for thirty-four years. Of course I knew.”
Even Prescott looked impressed.
“Where does it go?”
“Old carriage house.”
“That’s outside the inner security perimeter.”
“Exactly,” Nora said. “Which means attackers expecting you to move deeper into the mansion may not be watching it.”
Lawson hated the idea.
But gunfire sounded again.
Closer.
“Get transport equipment.”
The nurses moved.
Dr. Yates stepped toward the medication cabinet.
“I need to prepare their infusion.”
Nora blocked him.
“No.”
He stared at her.
“Move.”
“We’re not taking Meridian medication.”
“They need support.”
“Use sealed emergency stock from another supplier.”
“There isn’t enough.”
“Then they go without for twenty minutes.”
“You are risking their lives.”
Nora’s eyes flashed.
“If the first lab result is right, we risk their lives by giving it.”
Lawson stepped between them.
“No Meridian product.”
Dr. Yates looked at him.
“Lawson—”
“That decision is made.”
Yates backed away.
But Nora saw his hand tremble.
She also saw where his eyes went.
Not toward the children.
Toward his phone sitting inside an evidence bag.
Fear again.
Something was terribly wrong.
The children were transferred onto compact rolling stretchers.
Blythe began coughing.
Jonah refused to release her hand.
“Put the beds together,” Nora said.
The nurses did.
Lawson helped push.
Odessa led them through a linen storage room at the end of the corridor.
She pulled away an old shelving panel.
Behind it was a narrow stone passage descending into darkness.
Prescott stared.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Odessa switched on an old battery lantern.
“My generation did not throw away useful things.”
They entered single file.
Two guards first.
Then Odessa.
The children.
Nora.
Lawson.
Prescott and two more guards behind.
Dr. Yates came last.
The hidden passage smelled of stone and dust.
Every few seconds the mansion trembled from distant fighting.
Blythe’s breathing became shallower.
Nora kept one hand on the portable monitor.
“Stay with me, sweetheart.”
“I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“Can I sleep?”
“Not yet.”
Blythe opened her eyes.
“Why?”
Nora forced a smile.
“Because I’m selfish and I want company.”
Blythe gave the faintest smile.
Jonah whispered from beside her.
“I’m company.”
“You are.”
“Then Bly can sleep.”
Nora swallowed.
“Soon.”
Lawson heard every word.
He walked beside his children’s stretcher with one hand gripping the metal rail.
For the first time since his empire began, Lawson Mercer was leaving his own house through a hidden tunnel.
Not to save money.
Not weapons.
Not secrets.
Two sick children.
Nothing else mattered.
Halfway through the passage Prescott’s radio crackled.
“South corridor compromised.”
Then static.
Lawson looked backward.
“How close?”
“Too close.”
They kept moving.
The passage narrowed.
Old pipes ran overhead.
Then Nora smelled something.
“Stop.”
Lawson looked at her.
“What?”
“Do you smell that?”
Prescott sniffed.
“Dust.”
“No.”
She moved toward Blythe’s stretcher.
A faint medicinal odor.
Nora’s eyes dropped to the portable infusion line.
Dr. Yates had connected a small emergency syringe to Blythe’s access port before they left.
Nora grabbed the clamp.
Dr. Yates lunged forward.
“Don’t!”
She shut the line.
“What did you give her?”
“Anti-nausea medication.”
“From where?”
“Emergency kit.”
“Whose emergency kit?”
“Nora!”
Blythe suddenly gasped.
Her body jerked once.
The monitor alarm screamed.
Heart rate falling.
“Nora?” Lawson said.
She did not answer.
She was already moving.
“Put her flat.”
The guards froze.
“Now!”
They lowered the stretcher.
Blythe’s eyes rolled upward.
Nora checked her airway.
“Blythe, open your eyes.”
Nothing.
Lawson went white.
“What’s happening?”
“Possible reaction.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned toward Dr. Yates.
“What was in that syringe?”
“Standard medication.”
“Show me.”
“I disposed of it.”
Nora’s head snapped up.
“In the tunnel?”
Yates said nothing.
Lawson stepped toward him.
Prescott immediately drew his weapon.
Dr. Yates backed into the wall.
“Lawson, listen to me—”
“Where is the syringe?”
“I said I disposed of it.”
“Where?”
Silence.
Then a sound came from farther behind them.
Footsteps.
Running.
The attackers had found the passage.
“Move!” Prescott shouted.
Nora remained over Blythe.
“She can’t be moved yet.”
“They’re coming.”
“Give me sixty seconds.”
“You have twenty.”
Nora began emergency treatment with the equipment available, talking to Blythe the entire time.
“Come on, sweetheart. Stay mad at me. You still owe me a happy ending.”
Lawson dropped to his knees beside her.
“Tell me what to do.”
Nora looked at him.
“Talk to her.”
“What?”
“She knows your voice.”
He took Blythe’s hand.
“Sweetheart.”
Nothing.
The footsteps behind grew louder.
“Blythe.”
His voice cracked.
For the first time in years, Lawson Mercer did not care who heard it.
“You listen to me. You are not leaving me.”
The monitor continued its terrible alarm.
“You hear me? Jonah needs you.”
Jonah was crying silently from the other stretcher.
“Dad?”
Lawson looked at him.
Jonah reached for his sister.
“Tell her about Mom.”
Lawson stopped breathing.
Nora looked at him.
The footsteps were closer.
Prescott’s men positioned themselves at the turn in the passage.
“Ten seconds!”
Lawson pressed his forehead against Blythe’s hand.
“Your mother loved thunderstorms,” he whispered.
Blythe did not move.
“She would open every window in the house even when I told her not to.”
His throat tightened.
“She said the world sounded honest during storms.”
A faint change appeared on the monitor.
Nora saw it.
“Again.”
Lawson kept talking.
“She burned pancakes every Sunday.”
Jonah laughed through tears.
“Bad pancakes.”
“Terrible pancakes.”
Blythe’s fingers twitched.
Nora looked up.
“There.”
Her heart rate began rising.
Weakly.
But rising.
Blythe sucked in a shallow breath.
Lawson nearly collapsed.
Nora exhaled.
“We move now.”
Prescott shouted.
“Go!”
The first gunshots cracked inside the stone passage behind them.
The guards returned fire.
Odessa pushed Jonah’s stretcher.
Lawson and Nora pushed Blythe.
They raced toward the far end.
Dr. Yates moved with them.
Then something metallic struck the floor.
Nora looked down.
A small syringe had fallen from Yates’s coat pocket.
He saw it.
She saw it.
Lawson saw both of them see it.
Dr. Yates stopped running.
His face crumpled.
“I’m sorry.”
Lawson turned.
“For what?”
Yates’s eyes filled with tears.
“They have my daughter.”
May you like
Then the lights at the far end of the passage went out.
And someone began unlocking the carriage-house door from the other side.
