Chapter 10 - The Crosshairs
“Everyone out of the master suite! Fall back to the ground floor hallway!” Agent Vance yelled, grabbing Rachel by the shoulder and shoving her toward the door as the sound of shattering glass echoed from the ground floor below.
Crash!
The front living room window had just been blown inward.
Footsteps—heavy, calculated, and entirely devoid of panic—began ascending the staircase with military precision.
“We’re trapped,” Rachel whispered, her hand instinctively dropping to her side, searching for something—anything—to use as defense, finding only the smooth leather of her tote bag containing the property deeds.
“Not yet,” Vance muttered, drawing her sidearm and pulling the slide back with a sharp, lethal metallic snap. She kicked the master bedroom door shut and threw the deadbolt, though they both knew a simple household lock wouldn't hold against a tactical breach charge for more than three seconds.
Vance shoved the micro-SD card deep into her own vest pocket, grabbed Rachel by the arm, and dragged her toward the adjoining master bathroom, which featured a secondary fire escape ladder leading down to the backyard patio.
“Move! Through the window!” Vance ordered, unlatching the frosted glass pane and pushing it outward into the damp evening air.
As Rachel scrambled up onto the bathroom vanity to reach the window ledge, a deafening blast rocked the second-floor hallway outside.
The master bedroom door exploded inward in a storm of splintered wood and flying shrapnel, throwing both women off balance as the heavy oak panel slammed into the floorboards.
Through the billow of grey smoke filling the doorway, a tall figure in a matte-black tactical helmet and heavy body armor stepped into the room. The intruder didn't shout warnings or read rights. He simply raised a suppressed assault rifle, locking the laser sight directly onto Agent Vance’s chest.
Before the intruder could pull the trigger, Vance raised her own weapon and fired twice through the smoke.
Bang! Bang!
The first round sparked harmlessly off the intruder’s reinforced chest plate, but the second caught him in the shoulder, spinning him sideways into the doorframe.
“Go, Rachel! Go!” Vance screamed, firing a third shot as she scrambled backward toward the open bathroom window.
Rachel threw herself through the glass opening onto the metal rungs of the fire escape ladder, the cold rain hitting her face as she began sliding downward toward the muddy patio below.
But as her boots hit the wet grass of the backyard and she looked up toward the second-story window, her blood turned to ice.
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Standing on the fire escape landing above, holding Agent Vance by the tactical vest with one hand while pressing a cold steel blade against her throat with the other, wasn't a nameless mercenary.
It was a man whose face Rachel knew better than her own—a man the federal government had buried under five feet of snow in the Swiss Alps nine years ago, looking down at her with a chilling, familiar smile.
