Chapter 9 — The Last Command
The fire spread faster than anyone expected.
Old wood, gasoline, dry furniture, and years of dust turned the lodge into a furnace.
Firefighters had not yet reached the property.
The nearest truck was more than ten miles away.
Emily lay on the wet ground while a medic cut the restraints from her wrists. She was conscious, but the sedative made her speech slow.
“There’s a man downstairs,” she repeated. “Bell kept talking to him.”
“Who?” Sergeant Brooks asked.
“I don’t know. He called him Samuel.”
Deputy Price, still being treated near the woodpile, heard the name.
His face changed.
“My father.”
Calvin Price’s father had been the deputy mentioned in Judge Whitmore’s recording.
Samuel Price had supposedly died nine years earlier.
At least that was what public records said.
“He’s alive?” Brooks asked.
Calvin stared at the burning lodge.
“Vivian paid for a private care facility after his stroke. Bell moved him.”
“Why?”
“He knew what happened to the judge.”
A muffled bang came from beneath the lodge.
Titan barked at the coal door.
Flames had not reached the basement yet, but smoke poured through cracks in the foundation.
I moved toward Titan.
Brooks grabbed my shoulder.
“You’re not going inside.”
“There may be a witness trapped down there.”
“The structure is collapsing.”
“Then open the door.”
Two officers tried the coal hatch.
It was secured from inside by a heavy metal bar.
Titan scratched at the lower corner.
There was a narrow gap where the wood had rotted.
I pushed my cane through and felt for the bar.
Too high.
Marcus found an iron hook near the woodpile. We slid it through the gap and lifted together.
The bar moved.
The hatch opened.
Smoke rushed out.
Titan entered before anyone could stop him.
“Titan!”
He disappeared down the stone steps.
I covered my mouth with my coat and followed.
Brooks cursed and came behind me with a flashlight.
The basement was divided into two rooms.
Shelves of old hunting equipment filled the first. Oxygen tanks and medical supplies filled the second.
Titan stood beside a hospital bed.
An elderly man lay strapped to it, a clear tube beneath his nose. His body was thin and twisted from a stroke, but his eyes were open.
Samuel Price.
A video camera pointed at him from a tripod.
“He recorded a confession,” Brooks said.
We released the straps.
Samuel tried to speak.
Only one word came clearly.
“Bell.”
A crash sounded above us.
The ceiling shook.
“We move now,” Brooks ordered.
Marcus and another officer carried the bed frame toward the stairs.
I grabbed the camera and several labeled tapes.
Titan suddenly turned back.
“Come!” I commanded.
He did not move.
He stared toward a narrow hallway beneath the front section of the lodge.
A human cough came from the darkness.
Dr. Bell was still inside.
“Leave him,” Brooks said. “We don’t have time.”
Bell appeared through the smoke.
His clothes were burning along one sleeve. Blood ran from his forehead.
He held the pistol.
Brooks raised her weapon.
“Drop it!”
Bell looked at Samuel Price being carried toward the exit.
“No.”
“Drop the gun!”
“He was supposed to die years ago.”
Bell raised the pistol.
Titan lunged.
Bell fired.
The sound exploded inside the basement.
Titan struck Bell’s chest, knocking him backward.
The bullet hit the stone wall.
Bell fell beneath a collapsing shelf.
His pistol slid across the floor.
Titan tried to stand.
Then his back legs folded.
“Titan!”
I dropped beside him.
Blood darkened the fur near his shoulder.
Bell reached for the pistol.
I could have let the fire take him.
For one terrible second, I wanted to.
Then I remembered Emily telling me not to let anger make me careless.
I kicked the weapon away.
Brooks pulled Bell from beneath the shelf and cuffed him.
“You’re saving me?” he coughed.
“No,” I said. “I’m saving the truth from becoming whatever story you’d tell from a grave.”
We dragged Bell toward the coal hatch.
The ceiling collapsed behind us.
The blast of heat threw me against the steps.
My hip gave way.
I fell.
Titan lay several feet behind me.
“Thomas!” Brooks shouted.
“Get Bell out!”
She hesitated.
“Go!”
Marcus took Bell from her.
Brooks came back down.
Together, we lifted Titan.
The dog whimpered once.
“Stay with me,” I whispered.
Smoke swallowed the basement.
The coal door seemed impossibly far away.
Brooks pushed from behind while I carried Titan’s chest.
We reached the steps as part of the floor above collapsed, sending sparks across the room.
“Up!” Brooks shouted.
Hands reached through the hatch.
Officers pulled Titan out first.
Then me.
Brooks emerged seconds before the basement windows shattered.
The lodge collapsed inward.
For several minutes, the world became sirens, rain, smoke, and shouting.
A medic cut away the fur around Titan’s wound.
“The bullet passed through the shoulder,” she said. “He’s losing blood, but it missed the chest.”
A police helicopter was redirected to transport him to an emergency veterinary hospital.
Emily crawled toward him.
Her hands shook as she placed them around his face.
“You came back for me,” she whispered.
Titan licked her wrist.
Dr. Bell was transported under armed guard.
Samuel Price survived.
The camera from the basement survived too.
Three days later, investigators watched the tapes.
Samuel’s speech had been clearer when Bell began recording him.
He confessed that Vivian and Dr. Bell had arranged Judge Whitmore’s death. Bell struck the judge with a rifle butt during an argument, then staged a hunting accident. Samuel Price altered the scene and pressured the coroner’s office to accept Bell’s report.
Years later, when Samuel threatened to confess, they declared him dead, changed his identity, and kept him sedated in private facilities.
The tapes also recorded Bell trying to force Samuel to blame the entire crime on Vivian.
Bell had been preparing to eliminate his last partner.
Deputy Calvin Price agreed to cooperate after learning what Bell had done to his father.
He surrendered records of payments, communications, and local officials who had protected the Whitmores.
Graham remained in custody.
Vivian was denied bail.
Oliver Kane negotiated with prosecutors and began identifying shell companies.
The empire was collapsing.
But Emily did not care about headlines or indictments while Titan remained in surgery.
We waited outside the operating room until sunrise.
When the veterinarian finally appeared, Emily stood so quickly she nearly fell.
“He survived,” the veterinarian said.
The bullet had damaged muscle but missed the major artery. Titan would need months of rehabilitation, but he was expected to walk normally.
Emily covered her face and sobbed.
I closed my eyes.
For the first time since her phone call at 2:17 in the morning, I allowed myself to believe we might truly escape this.
Then Sergeant Brooks entered the waiting room.
Her expression told me the fight was not over.
“Graham’s attorney filed for emergency release,” she said.
“On what grounds?”
“He claims Emily fabricated the abuse to hide her own involvement in the fraud.”
Emily lowered her hands.
Brooks continued.
“He has documents carrying her signature.”
“They forged them,” I said.
“Maybe. But a judge will have to decide whether there’s enough evidence to hold him on the financial charges.”
“What about the kennel?”
“His attorneys say the employees were pressured by you and that the confinement was a medical intervention ordered by Dr. Bell.”
Emily stared at her.
“Bell kidnapped me.”
“And Graham’s lawyers are preparing to argue that Bell acted alone.”
The criminal case had evidence.
But Graham had spent years placing Emily’s name inside the fraud.
He had not only abused her.
He had prepared her to carry his guilt.
Emily looked through the glass toward Titan’s recovery room.
Then she wiped her face.
“When is the hearing?”
“Monday.”
Emily straightened.
Her wrists were bruised. Her cheek was still purple. Her body had not healed.
But the woman who had faced down a drunk man at a gas station was returning.
“I’ll testify.”
Brooks hesitated.
“His attorneys will attack everything about you.”
Emily looked at me.
“They already took my home, my job, my name, and my voice.”
May you like
She turned back to Brooks.
“They don’t get to keep them.”
