Chapter 4 - The Blast
Vance aggressively grabbed me by my heavy coat and hurled me backward toward the open doorway.
He violently threw his own massive body directly on top of mine as a human shield.
The hidden bomb detonated with an absolutely deafening, earth-shattering roar.
The entire floor of the ancient post office completely disintegrated in a blinding flash of white heat.
Thousands of wooden splinters and jagged pieces of iron rained violently down upon our heads.
The concussive shockwave aggressively knocked the breath completely out of my fragile lungs.
My ears rang with a high-pitched, terrifying whine that completely drowned out the sound of the collapsing roof.
Vance groaned heavily and slowly rolled off me, his jacket completely scorched and smoking.
"Are you entirely in one piece?" he coughed out, wiping a stream of blood from his forehead.
I nodded weakly, completely paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the explosive ambush.
Evan had entirely anticipated our desperate run for the hidden legal documents.
He had somehow found the secret safe first and left a lethal trap in its place.
"He wants to completely erase every single trace of David's past," Vance muttered angrily.
Suddenly, the distinct, terrifying sound of approaching helicopter blades echoed through the mountain valley.
A massive black chopper violently crested the ridge, shining a blinding searchlight directly into the ghost town.
"The sheriff called in a heavily armed tactical private security team," Vance yelled over the deafening noise.
"We cannot possibly fight them out in the open like this."
He dragged me forcefully toward the ruins of an old, collapsed mining entrance at the edge of town.
Bullets began to violently tear through the rotting wooden structures all around us.
The mercenaries were shooting blindly into the thick fog, entirely hoping to catch us in the crossfire.
We desperately squeezed through a narrow gap in the rusted iron bars of the mine shaft.
The air inside the dark tunnel was incredibly cold and smelled strongly of damp earth and copper.
Vance clicked on a small tactical flashlight, casting a narrow beam of light into the pitch-black abyss.
We limped deeper into the subterranean maze, completely leaving the chaotic gunfire far behind us.
The tunnel slowly widened into a massive, heavily reinforced underground concrete bunker.
It looked absolutely nothing like an abandoned, forgotten coal mine.
There were glowing fluorescent lights mounted securely to the ceiling and modern ventilation fans humming quietly.
"David secretly built this fully functional survival bunker entirely off the grid," Vance whispered in sheer awe.
"He told me he needed a place to completely hide his most valuable asset from Evan."
We carefully walked past rows of heavily stocked canned food and large water purification tanks.
At the very back of the massive bunker, a heavy steel security door stood slightly ajar.
Vance raised his pistol and slowly pushed the heavy metal door completely open.
Inside the small, sterile room was a simple cot, a sink, and a large bookshelf.
Sitting quietly on the edge of the cot was a woman with long, entirely graying hair.
She looked up at us with wide, completely terrified blue eyes.
My heart violently stopped entirely inside my chest when I recognized her beautiful, aged face.
It was Claire, David's first wife, who had supposedly burned to death in a tragic house fire fifteen years ago.
"You should not have come down here, Sarah," Claire whispered with a violently trembling voice.
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"Because he followed you directly inside."
A cold, suppressed gunshot instantly echoed through the room, and Vance violently collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood.
