Chapter 7 - The Woman Who Paid Before the Plane Fell
Bullets struck the brick walls in short, disciplined bursts.
Rocco pushed Clara behind the remains of the fireplace. Samuel crawled toward the old kitchen while Sierra pressed herself flat against the floor.
“How many exits?” Rocco asked.
Samuel pointed toward the cellar.
“There was a coal passage.”
“Was?”
“The fire damaged it.”
“Tonight is full of unreliable tunnels.”
Rocco fired twice through the window. One of the attackers fell behind the silver sedan.
Vittorio’s voice came from outside.
“Gino doesn’t want Clara Bell harmed.”
Clara looked at Rocco.
“Why would he care?”
“He doesn’t,” Rocco said. “He wants you alive because you know where the evidence is.”
Samuel opened the cellar door.
Cold air rose from below.
Rocco covered the others while they descended. The passage beneath the house was partly collapsed, forcing them to crawl between burned beams and fallen stone.
Behind them, boots entered the ruins.
Sierra struggled through the narrow opening.
“My coat cost eight thousand dollars.”
Clara looked back.
“Then it can afford to get dirty.”
Despite everything, Rocco heard Samuel laugh once.
They emerged through a drainage pipe below the ridge. The old hearse was visible uphill, but Vittorio’s men had surrounded it.
Sierra pointed east.
“My car has a remote starter.”
“You’re suggesting we run toward the people shooting at us?” Clara asked.
“No. I’m suggesting the car runs toward them.”
Sierra pressed a button.
The sedan’s engine started.
Its headlights flashed.
Several gunmen turned.
Rocco fired at the fuel canister beside the ruined porch. The explosion sent flames across the yard.
They ran for the tree line.
Rocco’s injured ankle failed after twenty yards. He fell hard, losing the gun.
Clara immediately came back.
“Keep going,” he ordered.
“No.”
“Clara.”
“You don’t get to command me because people fear your last name.”
She pulled his arm over her shoulder.
Samuel supported him from the other side.
They moved deeper into the forest as the fire spread behind them.
Sierra found a logging trail leading toward an abandoned hunting lodge. By dawn, they reached the cabin and barricaded the doors.
Rocco’s ankle had swollen nearly twice its size.
Clara cut away the bandage.
“You need a doctor.”
“I need answers.”
“You won’t get any if the bone heals incorrectly and an infection kills you.”
“An infection would have to stand in line.”
She glared at him.
Samuel found an old radio and contacted Dr. Miriam Holt, Cedar Hollow’s only physician. She arrived an hour later in a farm truck, examined Rocco, reset the fracture, and stitched the wound near his ribs.
“You should be in a hospital,” she said.
“Can you keep me out of one?”
“For forty-eight hours. After that, your body gets a vote.”
When she left, Rocco opened Ray’s notebook.
The payments to Lucia Castellano appeared on three separate pages. The first was made before Antonio’s disappearance. The second arrived six months later. The third continued annually for twenty years.
All came from a company called North Star Custodial Trust.
Samuel recognized the name.
“That company purchased the old orphanage outside town.”
Clara looked up.
“St. Agnes?”
“It closed before you were born.”
Rocco studied the dates.
“What was it used for afterward?”
“No one knows. Danner owns the property now.”
Sierra sat near the window.
“Gino told me your mother had no involvement in business.”
“My mother says many things.”
“You think she knew about the trafficking route?”
Rocco closed the notebook.
“I think she was paid.”
Clara watched him carefully.
“That doesn’t prove why.”
“It proves she lied.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“In my family, they usually are.”
Samuel unfolded the map from Evelyn’s grave. Half the route ran from the bakery cellar to Black Ridge. The missing half likely showed the entrance to the rail tunnel.
A symbol had been drawn beside St. Agnes.
A small star.
Rocco compared it to the trust’s name.
“North Star.”
Sierra leaned forward.
“Ray hid the second part there.”
A knock struck the lodge door.
Everyone froze.
Three short knocks.
A pause.
Then two more.
Samuel relaxed slightly.
“That’s Dr. Holt’s signal.”
Rocco picked up the gun.
“Dr. Holt left twenty minutes ago.”
The knock came again.
Three.
Pause.
Two.
Clara moved beside the window and looked through a crack in the boards.
Her face changed.
“It’s my little brother.”
Samuel stood so quickly that his chair fell backward.
Clara opened the door.
A thin nineteen-year-old boy stumbled inside. Blood covered one side of his face.
“Evan!”
She caught him before he fell.
Samuel knelt beside his son.
“Where have you been?”
Evan struggled to focus.
“Danner’s men took me from college yesterday. They said they’d kill Dad if I didn’t tell them about the bakery cellar.”
Clara pressed a towel to his head.
“How did you escape?”
“I didn’t.”
The room went silent.
Evan looked toward the trees.
“They let me go.”
Rocco crossed to the window.
A line of vehicles waited on the logging road below the lodge.
Not approaching.
Watching.
Evan began to cry.
“They put something in my jacket.”
Clara searched the pockets and found a small black device blinking red.
A tracker.
Rocco crushed it beneath his boot.
Then the radio on the table turned on by itself.
Gino’s voice filled the cabin.
“Rocco, you always were difficult to bring home.”
Rocco stared at the speaker.
“You shot my father.”
Silence answered.
Then Gino sighed.
“Your father made a choice.”
“And my mother?”
Another pause.
“She made hers.”
“Tell me what she was paid for.”
Gino’s voice softened.
“To keep you alive.”
Outside, engines started.
Gino spoke one final sentence.
“But if you open what Ray buried beneath St. Agnes, I will no longer be able to honor that agreement.”
The radio went dead.
Rocco looked at the people around him.
Clara held her injured brother.
Samuel clutched Evelyn’s map.
Sierra watched the road.
For thirty-one years, Gino had protected a secret beneath an abandoned orphanage.
Now he was willing to burn an entire town to keep it closed.
May you like
Rocco loaded the gun.
“We’re going to St. Agnes.”
