Chapter 6 - Fire in the Old Mill
The phone went dead.
“We have to move! Now!” I yelled, grabbing my jacket and pulling Clara toward the back exit of the workshop.
Lily woke up with a sharp cry as Clara lifted her into her arms. Above us, the heavy thud of tactical boots echoed against the wooden joists of the ceiling. The smell of raw natural gas suddenly began leaking through the ventilation ducts—Vincent had breached the main supply line upstairs.
“Is there another way out?” I demanded, checking the magazine of my gun. Three rounds left.
“The old coal chute,” Clara said, pointing to an iron door at the far end of the basement corridor. “It leads out to the storm drainage channel beside the river!”
“Go! Take Lily and run!”
“I’m not leaving you!” Clara shouted over the growing hiss of escaping gas. “You can barely stand!”
“If they take those keys, Julian died for nothing!” I pushed her toward the chute. “Get to the Harbor Trust! Insert the keys together into Box 404! Promise me, Clara!”
Before she could answer, the wooden door at the top of the stairs blew inward with a deafening roar. Glass shattered, and dark-clad figures began descending through the smoke.
I turned around, raised my pistol, and fired two precise shots into the overhead gas pipe near the stairwell.
A blinding flash of yellow flame erupted as the leaking gas ignited, creating an impassable wall of fire between the enforcers and the basement corridor. The blast knocked me off my feet, slamming my shoulder hard against the concrete floor.
Through the haze of smoke and fire, I saw Clara hesitate at the coal chute. She looked at me, then at her daughter, her face set in fierce determination.
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“We do this together, Dominic!” she screamed over the roar of the flames.
She grabbed my arm with extraordinary strength, hauling me toward the chute. Together, we tumbled through the narrow metal tunnel just as a second explosion ripped through the workshop behind us, sealing the basement in a torrent of rubble and flame.
