Chapter 5 - Blood Under The Oak
I was thrown against the tool pegboard. Metal wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers rained down around me like shrapnel. My phone skittered across the concrete, its flashlight beam angling upward to illuminate the bloody, furious face of Silas Vance.
Blood dripped from his torn jaw onto his gray canvas jacket. His eyes were wide, manic, and wild. He raised the crowbar high above his head, his breathing coming in ragged, wet gasps.
"You should've stayed in Denver, girl," he snarled, raising the weapon. "Margaret told me you always were the busybody. If your sister hadn't died, she would've had to put both of you away."
"You killed Madison?" I gasped, tasting copper where my lip had split against the wall.
"Madison had a trust from her granddaddy," Silas spat, stepping closer. "Half a million in stocks. Margaret needed that money to cover her bad real estate deals. But Arthur caught on. He was going to take the files to the cops. So Margaret had me run his car off the bridge. Only he didn't drown. He crawled out the window like a cockroach. Found him washed up on the bank three days later."
He laughed—a vile, wretched sound. "Margaret couldn't bring herself to put a bullet in him. Said God would damn her soul for murder. So she built this little retreat instead. Locked him down here, let him think about his sins while we lived off his pension and Madison’s insurance."
"You're a monster," I whispered.
"I'm an employee," Silas corrected coldly. "And my contract is almost finished."
He brought the crowbar down with lethal force.
I rolled desperately to the left. The steel tip smashed into the concrete floor where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier, sending sparks and chips of stone flying into the air.
Scrambling on hands and knees, my hand found the heavy pipe wrench in the dark. As Silas raised the crowbar for a second strike, I swung the wrench horizontally with both hands, aiming directly at his kneecap.
The heavy steel collided with bone with a sickening crack.
Silas shrieked in agony, his right leg buckling beneath him as he collapsed sideways. The crowbar flew from his grip, clattering loudly across the floor and tumbling straight down the open shaft into the darkness below.
He roared in pain, clawing at his shattered knee, but his hands blindly reached for my ankle, his fingernails digging through my denim jeans like claws. "I'll drag you down with me!" he screamed, his face contorted in demonic rage.
Suddenly, a loud crack echoed from the doorway of the shed.
Silas’s head jerked backward, his grip loosening instantly as he slumped face-down onto the concrete.
Standing in the doorway, soaked to the skin in a drenched trench coat, was Detective Harris. His service pistol was drawn, a smoking muzzle pointed directly at Silas’s motionless body. Behind him, red and blue strobe lights painted the wet cedar walls in violent flashes of emergency color.
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"Drop your hands, Emily! Don't move!" Harris shouted, rushing inside to kick Silas’s limp arms away from me before checking the man’s pulse. "He's alive, but out cold."
"The shaft, Harris!" I screamed, pulling myself up by the edge of the workbench, tears streaming down my face. "He's down there! Dad's down there!"
