Chapter 17 - The Broken Lock
The rain felt like needles driving into Martha’s skin. The wind hit her in violent, unpredictable gusts, threatening to rip her fingers from the wet stone masonry.
She pressed her chest flat against the cold exterior wall of the mansion, inching her boots sideways along the narrow limestone ledge. Below her, the dark canopy of the estate's ancient oaks whipped violently in the storm, looking like black sea waves ready to swallow her whole.
Her fingers were numb, bleeding where the rough stone scraped her skin, but she refused to look down. She kept her eyes focused on the iron railing of Maxwell’s balcony, ten feet ahead... eight feet... five feet.
A sudden, savage gust of wind slammed into her side.
Her left boot slipped on a patch of wet moss.
Martha gasped as her foot kicked out into empty air. Her body tilted backward toward the drop. With a desperate, primal surge of adrenaline, her hands clawed at an ornamental gargoyle jutting from the wall. Her fingernails caught the stone groove, her arms screaming under the sudden jolt of her full body weight dangling over the abyss.
She swung for two agonizing seconds over the darkness.
*Climb,* she told herself, teeth chattering violently. *Climb!*
She hauled herself upward, finding a foothold in the stone molding, and lunged forward with everything she had left.
Her hands slammed onto the wet iron bars of Maxwell’s balcony railing.
She dragged herself over the balustrade, tumbling hard onto the stone floor of the terrace, gasping, coughing up rainwater, her body shaking from hypothermia and terror.
She scrambled to her feet and ran toward the French doors of the bedroom.
They were locked from the inside, but through the rain-streaked glass, the scene inside froze the blood in her veins.
Dr. Cole stood beside the four-poster bed. He had already set aside his black coat, wearing only his vest and rolled-up shirtsleeves. On the bedside table sat an open stainless-steel kit, containing a long, clear ampoule labeled *Potassium Chloride* and a large gauge syringe.
Maxwell lay in the bed, the blankets pulled up to his waist, his eyes closed.
Cole was tapping the syringe, expelling the air bubbles, a calm, detached expression on his face—the look of an accountant balancing a ledger, not a doctor preparing to murder a man in cold blood.
"It really is a pity, Maxwell," Cole’s muffled voice penetrated the glass, accompanied by the low rumble of thunder. "You had a brilliant mind. But Evelyn pays far better than your father ever did. In two minutes, your heart will enter ventricular fibrillation. A massive, sudden coronary. Completely untraceable in a man of your deteriorated condition."
Cole set down the vial and took a step toward the bed, the needle glinting under the lamplight.
Martha didn't search for a key.
She grabbed a heavy, cast-iron patio chair from the balcony, hoisted it above her head, and hurled it with all her strength through the French glass doors.
*SHATTER!*
Exploding shards of glass rained across the hardwood floor. The icy wind and rain roared into the bedroom, billowing the heavy velvet curtains like black wings.
Cole spun around, his eyes wide with shock and fury, his syringe raised like a weapon. "What the hell?!"
Martha vaulted through the shattered frame, her boots crunching over the broken glass, her soaked coat dripping water onto the Persian rug.
"Step away from him, Cole!" she screamed over the howling storm.
Cole stared at her for a split second, then a cruel, mocking laugh escaped his lips. "The little maid? You climbed the terrace? How touching. Marcus was supposed to drown you in the river, but it seems I get the pleasure of cleaning up Evelyn's messes myself."
He pocketed the syringe and reached into his waistband, pulling out a compact, black semiautomatic pistol. He leveled the barrel straight at Martha’s forehead.
"You should have stayed downstairs, girl," Cole sneered, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Now you get to die in the same room as your master."
Martha braced herself, her hand reaching into her pocket for the paring knife, knowing she was too far to reach him before the bullet left the chamber.
Then, from the bed behind Cole, a voice spoke.
It wasn't the weak, raspy whisper of an invalid. It was a low, resonant, terrifying growl that rattled the very foundations of the room.
"Put the gun down, Richard."
Cole froze. His smile vanished.
Slowly, the doctor turned his head toward the bed.
Maxwell Vance was no longer lying down. He was sitting up, his shoulders squared, his eyes burning with an ancient, predatory rage.
And in his hands, resting comfortably across his lap, was the heavy, double-barreled 12-gauge hunting shotgun that had hung above the fireplace for twenty years.
May you like
The safety clicked off with a sound that seemed to stop the storm itself.
"You've been in my house for fourteen months, Cole," Maxwell said, his dark eyes locking onto the doctor’s trembling face. "Did you really think I didn't know where the shells were kept?"
