Chapter 29 - The Siege at the Safehouse
"EVANS, REVERSE! REVERSE RIGHT NOW!" Daniel roared, diving over Mason to shield the boy’s body with his own.
Before Deputy Evans could throw the transmission into reverse, the front windshield of the police van shattered inward in a shower of tempered glass.
*BANG!*
A high-caliber rifle round ripped through the dashboard, striking Evans squarely in the shoulder. The deputy yelled in agony as the van veered sharply off the gravel road, crashing into a thick birch tree with a bone-jarring crunch of metal and steaming radiator fluid.
The horn began to blare continuously—a single, piercing note slicing through the misty woods.
*BEEEEEEEEEP.*
"Evans! Evans, stay with me!" Daniel scrambled forward through the shattered cabin partition. Evans was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious, blood pooling rapidly down his tactical vest.
Outside the van, through the rain and steam, the silhouette of Julian Vance emerged from the dense forest.
He was a terrifying specter of violence. His face was blistered and raw from the flash fire in the garage, his left arm bound tightly to his torso with heavy black duct tape, but his right hand held a tactical 12-gauge shotgun. In his teeth, he clamped the bloody end of a combat bandage.
He racked the slide with one hand against his thigh. *CHCK-CHCK.*
"Mason, out the back door! Crawl! Do not look back!" Daniel kicked open the rear emergency doors of the crumpled van.
He grabbed Evans's fallen pump-action shotgun from the floorboards, hoisted Mason out into the mud, and shoved the boy beneath the low crawl space of the safehouse porch twenty feet away.
"Get under the deck, Mason! Into the foundation! Stay in the dirt!"
Mason scrambled on his hands and knees beneath the wooden slats, disappearing into the dark, damp crawl space underneath the cabin just as a blast of buckshot shredded the birch tree three feet above Daniel’s head.
*BOOM!*
Wood chips and pine needles rained down like shrapnel.
Daniel rolled behind the stone foundation of the porch steps, brought the shotgun to his shoulder, and fired blindly toward the treeline.
*BLAM!*
The kickback bruised Daniel's shoulder, but the blast forced Julian to duck behind the hood of the wrecked police cruiser.
"You're out of your league, Daniel!" Julian shouted over the blaring horn. "You're a civilian! You're a soft, sentimental weakling who let his dead wife's ghost dictate his life! Diane was right about you—you never deserved to breathe the same air as the Vance family!"
Julian stepped out from behind the cruiser, firing another blast through the porch railing, splintering the oak steps into flying kindling.
*BOOM!*
Daniel’s shotgun clicked empty. He had fired Evans’s remaining shell. He dropped the useless weapon into the mud.
He was out of ammunition. He was thirty miles from backup. The tactical team across the lake was trapped behind a wall of fire, and Deputy Evans was bleeding to death in the front seat of the van.
*It was just him and Julian.*
Daniel looked at his bare, bloodied hands. Then he looked at the open crawl space beneath the porch where his son was hiding. Mason’s small face was visible through the lattice, tears streaming through the mud on his cheeks, holding Emily’s bear tightly against his ribs.
*“Don't let them steal his light.”*
Daniel reached down into the mud beside the foundation and wrapped his fingers around a heavy, jagged piece of granite from the collapsed retaining wall—a fifteen-pound wedge of solid mountain rock.
He rose from the shadows of the porch steps and stepped directly into the open gravel driveway, perfectly framed in Julian’s sights.
"Julian!" Daniel screamed into the storm. "Here I am! Leave the boy alone and finish it!"
Julian stepped forward with a grotesque, triumphant sneer, raising the shotgun one-handed, aiming the barrel directly at Daniel’s chest.
"With pleasure, brother-in-law."
Julian pulled the trigger.
*CLICK.*
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The chamber was empty. Julian had burned his last shell breaching the van.
Before Julian could drop the shotgun and draw his combat knife, Daniel charged across the mud like a freight train, hurling his entire body forward, the jagged slab of granite raised high above his head.
