Chapter 7 - The Iron Hearth
Adrian looked completely unhinged.
The expensive charcoal suit was torn at the shoulder, his silk tie ripped away, his hair wild and matted with sweat. The chrome handcuffs were still clamped around his left wrist, dangling like a broken chain, clinking against the heavy wrought-iron poker dragged in his right hand.
He had clearly slipped his custody during the chaos of the car crash at the south gate.
"Adrian, drop the weapon!" Deputy Harris yelled, stepping forward, his service weapon drawn and leveled squarely at Adrian's chest. "On the ground! Face down, now!"
Adrian didn't even look at the cop. His entire universe had narrowed down to me and the woman cowering behind my legs. His mind, broken by arrogance and the sudden, total loss of control, couldn't process the reality of the badge or the gun.
"You think you're clever, Claire?" Adrian chuckled, a wet, hysterical sound that rose above the distant sirens. "You think you can just walk in here, sit at my father's table, and dictate terms to us? Everything you have belongs to me. Your company, your shares, that goddamn condo—it was all supposed to fix this!"
He pointed the iron tip of the poker directly at Rebecca.
"She was supposed to be dead!" he screamed, his voice cracking with rage. "The lawyers were supposed to release the trust funds last month! But Charles wouldn't let me finish it! He kept her down there like an insurance policy against me!"
Rebecca buried her face in my shoulder, shaking violently, her breath coming in ragged, hyperventilating gasps.
"Put the weapon down, Adrian," I said, stepping deliberately into his line of sight, shielding Rebecca with my body. The cold binder was pressed firmly against my ribs. "It's over. Look around you. The whole valley knows."
"Nothing is over until I say it is!"
Adrian charged.
He didn't hesitate. He lunged across the flagstones, raising the heavy iron poker above his head with both hands, aiming directly for my skull just as he had done with the porcelain plate twenty minutes earlier.
"Drop it!" Harris shouted, firing his taser.
The twin probes shot out with a sharp pop, but one of the darts caught the heavy wool of Adrian's swinging suit jacket, failing to make contact with his skin. The electrical current crackled harmlessly into the fabric.
Adrian swung the iron bar down with murderous force.
I didn't freeze. Not this time.
The instinct that had saved me when the plate hit kicked in with terrifying clarity. I dropped my weight, diving hard to the right onto the wet stone patio. The heavy iron poker missed my shoulder by inches, slamming into the concrete with a bone-jarring, spark-flying crack that shattered the edge of a stone planter.
The momentum pulled Adrian forward, throwing him off balance.
Before he could recover and raise the weapon again, a small figure darted out from the dark doorway of the kitchen.
It was Maya.
She wasn't holding a weapon. She held a heavy, steaming copper kettle of boiling water snatched from the stove. Without a second of hesitation, she hurled the scalding contents directly into Adrian's face.
Adrian let out an inhuman, curdling shriek of pure agony.
He dropped the iron poker, his hands flying to his blistering, red-hot skin as he stumbled backward, blinded and thrashing. "My eyes! God, my eyes!"
Deputy Harris closed the distance in a heartbeat. He tackled Adrian around the waist, slamming him face-first into the wet flagstones. The iron poker clattered away into the grass. Harris drove his knee hard into the small of Adrian's back, wrenching his arms behind him and violently ratcheting the second cuff onto his right wrist.
"Suspect in custody!" Harris yelled into his shoulder mic, breathing hard, pressing Adrian's screaming face into the cold stone. "Get additional units to the main house! I have the primary assailant secured!"
Maya stood frozen over them, the empty copper kettle hanging loosely from her blistered fingers, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a strange, cathartic shock.
I pulled myself up from the flagstones, my hands grazed and bleeding, my head spinning with a vicious, sickening throb. I looked down at Adrian, who was sobbing into the dirt, cursing my name through spit and tears.
"You're a monster," Maya whispered down at him, her voice finally devoid of fear. "You killed Arthur. You made Charles cover it up. And you were going to kill Claire, too."
I froze, turning my gaze sharply toward Maya. "What did you say?"
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Maya looked at me, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her pale cheeks. "Arthur didn't die of a heart attack in London, Claire. Adrian poisoned his own brother two years ago to take control of the family estate."
Before I could process the horror of her words, a piercing gunshot cracked through the vineyard below, followed by the unmistakable sound of an engine revving violently out of control.
