Chapter 10 - The False Sunrise
The live feed of a gun pointed at my daughter's head shattered my reality.
I dropped the flash drive and let the tablet fall to the cavern floor.
I screamed a raw, guttural sound and charged the lead mercenary with empty hands.
He was completely unprepared for the sheer, suicidal violence of my attack.
I slammed into him, driving him backward into the wooden support beams of the mine.
The ancient, rotted timber cracked with a sound like a cannon shot.
The ceiling of the cavern immediately groaned under the shifting weight of the mountain.
The mercenaries panicked, firing wildly into the dark as rocks began to fall.
I grabbed the mercenary's tactical vest and hurled him into his own men.
Then I grabbed Everett by the collar and dragged him toward the smallest escape tunnel.
Blake and Camille scrambled right behind us.
Seconds later, the central chamber collapsed in a deafening roar of dust and stone.
The mercenaries were buried alive under hundreds of tons of unforgiving rock.
We crawled blindly through the narrow shaft until we saw daylight.
We emerged onto the shoulder of a paved state highway, coughing up dust.
An Arizona State Trooper cruiser was parked fifty yards away, its lights flashing.
We had made it out alive.
The Whitmores collapsed on the asphalt, waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
I had saved the people who ruined me, and I had neutralized the threat in the canyon.
I sprinted toward the trooper, demanding to use his satellite phone to call the local police near my daughter's college.
I dialed her number with fingers coated in blood and dirt, praying I was not too late.
The line rang three times before it connected.
"Sophie?" I breathed, tears burning my eyes.
"I am fine, Dad," her voice replied, perfectly calm and steady.
A massive wave of relief washed over my exhausted body.
But then the tone of her voice shifted into something cold, calculated, and entirely unrecognizable.
"Good job keeping him alive, Dad," she whispered.
I froze, the phone pressed hard against my ear.
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"Now bring Everett to the extraction point," my daughter commanded.
"I have been waiting thirteen years to finish what you couldn't."
