Chapter 49 - The Fortress of St. Jude's Ridge
The blast doors of the vault slammed shut behind Daniel with an ear-splitting hydraulic hiss.
Heavy steel bars dropped into place across the emergency exit. From the ceiling, automated fire-suppression vents hissed open, flooding the vault with invisible, lethal nitrogen gas.
"In two minutes, the oxygen will drop to zero," Vanessa laughed, a wild, unhinged cackle that scraped against her damaged vocal cords. "The mainframe will finalize the transfer under my encrypted bypass, and you will choke to death listening to your dead wife's voice!"
Daniel didn't speak. Words were meaningless now.
He charged the ballistic glass partition separating the control booth from the server floor. He raised his shotgun and fired point-blank at the center of the partition. The glass spiderwebbed with white fractures. He fired again—the reinforced laminate groaned.
Vanessa’s laughter hitched in her throat as she saw the sheer, unbridled fury in Daniel’s eyes. He wasn't a man fighting for survival; he was an unstoppable force of vengeance.
With a primal roar, Daniel threw his entire body weight against the fractured glass. The panel shattered inward in a shower of diamond-sharp fragments. Daniel crashed into the control room, tumbling across the server floor.
Vanessa frantically reached for her sidearm on the console, but Daniel was already upon her.
He grabbed the barrel of her gun, wrenching it from her crippled fingers and throwing it across the room. He seized the arms of her wheelchair, spinning her around until she was staring directly into his face.
"Emily was twice the woman you could ever pretend to be," Daniel said, his voice terrifyingly calm amid the blaring alarms and hissing gas.
He grabbed the polished steel collar from the table.
Vanessa’s eyes bulged with primal horror. "No! Daniel, no! You wouldn't!"
"Discipline," Daniel whispered, quoting the very words she had used to justify her cruelty in the garden. "Isn't that what you called it?"
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With a cold, decisive snap, Daniel locked the steel collar around Vanessa’s own stitched throat.
***
