Chapter 6 - THE SECOND INMATES
For three endless minutes, neither Richard nor Marcus spoke. The only sound was the heavy, labored breathing of the billionaire as the horrific truth of his wife’s betrayal crashed down upon him.
“She’s going to seal us in here,” Richard whispered, sinking down onto an empty wooden crate, his hands trembling violently. “She’s going to bury us alive, just like she did to Leo.”
Marcus didn't panic. As a former federal investigator, his mind was already calculating angles, structural integrity, and alternative escape routes.
“She can bury the west wing hatch,” Marcus said firmly, shining his flashlight along the low stone foundation walls of the vault. “But these old Prohibition-era tunnels weren't built by amateurs. They were built to smuggle whiskey from the river up to the mansion during the 1920s. There’s a secondary ventilation shaft leading toward the old greenhouse.”
Richard looked up, a glimmer of desperate hope returning to his eyes. “The greenhouse? Thomas’s potting shed?”
“Exactly,” Marcus said, pulling a heavy steel pry bar from his tactical belt. “Help me with this lower stone slab. It looks like it was patched over with modern cement, but the mortar behind it is old and brittle.”
Without hesitation, Richard leaped off the crate and joined Marcus at the base of the western wall.
Together, they jammed the tip of the steel pry bar into a hairline crack between the cut limestone blocks.
Hnnngh!
Muscles straining, veins bulging in his neck, Richard threw his entire weight against the iron bar alongside Marcus.
Crack!
The old mortar gave way with a cloud of choking white dust. A chunk of limestone the size of a watermelon broke free, tumbling inward and revealing a draft of fresh, cool outdoor air rushing through from the other side.
They hacked away at the remaining bricks with their bare hands, ignoring the scrapes and bleeding knuckles, until a jagged, body-sized opening yawned before them.
Shining his flashlight through the gap, Marcus let out a sharp breath.
“We’re in the drainage ditch behind the potting shed,” Marcus said. “Come on, Mr. Hawthorne. We need to move before Mrs. Hawthorne realizes we’re out of the box.”
They squeezed through the narrow stone opening one by one, crawling out into the tall weeds behind the greenhouse just as the sun began to sink below the western tree line, casting long, bloody streaks across the Hawthorne estate.
Coughing and covered in dust, Richard stood up in the cool evening air, his eyes fixed on the towering limestone mansion looming in the distance.
“She’s still inside,” Richard said, his voice cold as ice.
“Yes,” Marcus agreed, resting his hand on his holster. “And she probably thinks we’re trapped two hundred feet underground.”
“Let’s go prove her wrong,” Richard said, marching briskly toward the grand glass conservatory doors.
But as they crossed the manicured lawn toward the terrace, they noticed something strange.
The front gates of the estate were wide open.
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A sleek black transport van was parked right outside the grand double doors of the foyer, and two men in dark suits were loading heavy metal suitcases into the back.
Eleanor wasn't waiting to be caught. She was cleaning out the accounts and running for the private airstrip ten miles away.
