My pregnant sister toasted to the death of my unborn baby at her baby shower, and when I tried to leave, my own mother shoved me off a second-floor balcony—but the detective’s discovery at the hospital revealed a nightmare far worse than I imagined. / Chapter 21 / 81

Chapter 21 - The Edge of the Abyss

Gunfire erupted from the approaching SUV. Heavy caliber rounds punched through the air, shattering the stone angels flanking the crypt into a spray of pulverized granite.

Croft fired blindly into the darkness before a round struck him in the throat, sending him collapsing backward into the open tomb with a wet, gurgling gasp.

The armored vehicle slammed to a halt ten feet from the entrance, its reinforced doors kicking open instantly.

To my absolute horror, the person who stepped out of the driver's side wasn't a police officer.

It was Martha.

She was wearing a blood-splattered silk dressing gown over a cashmere coat, her hair wild and disheveled, her eyes dilated with sheer, psychotic fury. In her hands was an assault rifle, the barrel smoking from the burst she had just fired into Croft.

"Martha!" Sterling screamed from behind the stone pillar. "Have you lost your mind? We had the transfer secured!"

"You were going to betray me, Raymond!" Martha shrieked, her voice echoing like a banshee's across the foggy cemetery. "I tapped your phone! I know you planned to force Elizabeth to sign the conservatorship over to you and leave me to rot in an asylum!"

She swung the barrel of the weapon, scanning the smoke-filled interior of the mausoleum until the iron sights settled squarely on me.

"Hello, sister," Martha spat, the venom in her voice curdling the cold night air. "Or should I call you *daughter*? You took everything from me before you were even born. You stole my father's love, you stole his fortune, and now you think you're going to walk away with his empire?"

Daniel lunged for his dropped weapon, but Martha fired a three-round burst into the ground at his feet, chipping the stone inches from his fingers. "Don't move, Detective! Or I’ll blow your spine through your chest!"

She reached into her coat with her left hand and pulled out a small black remote control with a blinking red LED.

"Do you know what’s under this mausoleum, Elizabeth?" Martha laughed, a ragged, broken sound that bordered on complete madness. "Fifty pounds of industrial demolition charges. Vogel and Croft wired the foundations ten years ago in case the state ever tried to exhume Arthur Senior’s body for forensic testing."

She raised the detonator, her thumb hovering directly over the red toggle.

"If I can't have the Vance bloodline," Martha whispered, her face twisting into a hideous, triumphant grin, "then no one will."

Behind her, through the shattered trees of the cemetery, the blue and red flashing lights of fifty law enforcement vehicles began to illuminate the foggy horizon, sirens wailing in the distance, closing in on the bluff from every direction.