Chapter 3 - The Broken Fortress
Julian didn't wait for permission.
He slipped a flat steel tool into the doorframe, released the chain with effortless precision, and guided me backward into the foyer.
“Grab your medication, your passport, and your boots,” he instructed, his tone brisk and clinical. “Leave everything else. We are abandoning this location.”
“My ultrasound photos—”
“Take them,” he said, his face softening for a fraction of a second. “Nothing that cannot fit in a shoulder bag.”
My hands were shaking as I snatched my purse from the dining table, tucking the small black-and-white print of my eleven-week-old baby into the zippered interior pocket.
Outside, a sharp crack echoed through the morning mist—the unmistakable sound of a high-caliber round shattering the rear window of my parked sedan.
Julian moved instantly.
He grabbed my arm, shielding my body with his broad frame, and shoved me down low behind the kitchen island.
“Stay down,” he commanded, drawing a matte-black sidearm from beneath his wool coat with terrifying fluidity.
Glass sprayed across the hardwood floor as two more rounds punched through the cottage living room windows, splintering the cedar paneling and showering the rug with debris.
I curled into a ball, my knees tucked against my chest, covering my belly with both arms while a silent scream caught in my throat.
This was what Cassian’s world looked like when the polished glass and public relations veneer were stripped away.
Cassian was probably sitting in Sabine’s sunlit kitchen right now, holding her hand while she wept over an imaginary phantom at her door, completely unaware that his real wife and unborn child were being hunted in the woods.
Julian raised his weapon, sighted through the broken pane above the sink, and fired two controlled, deafening shots.
A muffled curse and the heavy thump of a falling body echoed from the front gravel path.
“Move. Now,” Julian said, grabbing my wrist and hauling me to my feet.
He dragged me through the laundry room, kicking open the reinforced rear storm door that opened onto the sloping woodland behind the cottage.
The cold air hit my face like ice water. Twigs and wet leaves slapped against my cheeks as we plunged into the dense hemlock grove, racing along an overgrown deer path that led down toward the shoreline.
Behind us, an engine roared to life. A dark pickup truck had crashed through the wooden driveway gate, its tires spinning wildly in the mud.
“Head for the boathouse!” Julian barked, keeping himself between me and the tree line.
We reached the water’s edge just as the fog began to lift from the surface of the lake.
Tucked beneath the rotting wooden timbers of my father’s old boat slip sat a heavy aluminum utility boat, equipped with a massive, modern twin-outboard motor that looked completely out of place against the weathered planks.
“Get in and lie flat beneath the canvas,” Julian ordered, throwing off the mooring lines with practiced speed.
I scrambled over the gunwale, falling onto the damp aluminum floorboards and pulling the heavy green tarp over my shoulders.
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The engine fired up with an ear-splitting roar, spraying a wall of freezing lake water across the dock as Julian slammed the throttle forward.
The boat surged out into the open gray expanse of Lake Michigan just as three armed men burst through the tree line, their bullets skipping harmlessly across the foaming wake behind us.
