Chapter 4 - The Back Road
Leo didn't waste a second. The moment the heavy oak door clicked shut, he threw the deadbolt and dragged the heavy timber bench across the hardwood floor, jamming it beneath the doorknob.
""Leo, what are you doing?"" Elena gasped, gathering Mateo into her arms.
""They aren't here for legal paperwork, El,"" Leo said in a fierce whisper, rushing toward the rear hallway. ""One of them just drew a sidearm. They aren't taking us to probate court. They're making sure nobody survives to claim the trust.""
Elena’s face drained of all color. ""My father... he warned me in his letters. I thought he was just being paranoid.""
""Where did Mateo get this?"" Leo demanded, pulling out the folded photograph the boy had clutched so tightly.
Elena stared at the worn print. ""That was in my father's old locked briefcase in the attic. I haven't opened that trunk in two years.""
""I found it,"" Mateo whispered quietly from Elena's shoulder, pointing upward toward the ceiling access hatch. ""Men in the roof.""
A heavy thud rattled the front door, followed immediately by the sharp splintering of wood. Julian’s voice drifted through the panels, stripped of all polite cadence. ""Santos! Open the door, or we will remove the hinges!""
""Out the pantry. Now!"" Leo hissed.
He led them through the kitchen to the utility pantry at the back of the house. Behind a stack of canned goods was a small service hatch that led directly into the crawlspace beneath the floorboards—a feature Leo had reinforced when insulating the foundations the previous winter.
Leo popped the latch and dropped through into the damp darkness, reaching up to catch Mateo as Elena lowered him down. Elena slid through next, pulling the hatch nearly shut behind them just as a deafening bang echoed through the house above. Boots hit the living room floor with heavy, rhythmic precision.
""Check the bedrooms!"" a gruff voice barked above their heads. ""Don't let them reach their phones!""
Crouching low in the dirt, Leo led them through the narrow crawlspace toward the old cellar bilco doors at the rear of the property. The cold mud soaked through the knees of his work pants. Mateo didn't make a sound; the child had his face buried in Elena's sweater, sensing the mortal danger hanging in the air.
Leo pushed up gently against the bilco doors. They swung open into the thick brush of the surrounding woods without a squeak.
""Keep low, head for the tree line,"" Leo commanded, guiding Elena forward.
They scrambled out into the tall ferns just as glass shattered in the kitchen above them. Breaking into a sprint beneath the canopy of yellow birch trees, they ran along the deer trail toward the abandoned railway bed a half-mile away.
Behind them, a sudden pop-pop of silenced gunfire echoed through their kitchen walls. Then, the shrill ring of Leo's forgotten cell phone sounded from inside the woods.
May you like
He halted. Elena froze beside him.
The ringing wasn't coming from their pockets. It was coming from ten yards ahead on the deer path, sitting atop a mossy boulder: a fresh burner phone, vibrating violently in the autumn chill.
