Chapter 4 - Into the Whiteout
The silence in the dark house was deafening.
The temperature inside was already dropping rapidly.
I knew I could not just wait for him to return.
I found a heavy nylon rope in the utility closet and tied one end tightly around my waist.
I secured the other end to the heavy iron railing of the staircase.
I forced open the service door and walked directly into the blinding whiteout conditions.
The wind knocked the breath out of my lungs instantly.
The snow was up to my knees, making every single step feel like wading through wet cement.
I followed the faint, blinking red light of the damaged security perimeter.
Twenty minutes later, I found him.
Adrian was pinned beneath a collapsed steel awning behind the estate's greenhouse.
Somehow, I found the strength to wedge a broken steel pipe under the heavy metal frame.
Somehow, I freed him.
I grabbed him by the collar of his expensive coat and started dragging his nearly two-hundred-pound body backward through the deep snow.
My muscles screamed in absolute agony.
By the time I finally pulled him over the threshold and slammed the service door shut, we were both completely covered in ice.
I dragged him toward the grand fireplace in the living room.
His lips were dangerously blue.
His body was burning with an unnatural, raging fever.
May you like
But as I brushed the snow from his jacket, I smelled something that made my blood run cold.
The steel awning had not collapsed from the weight of the snow; it smelled strongly of chemical explosives.
