Chapter 9 - THE CEMETERY SIEGE
The first explosion collapsed the stairway.
Dust and dirt poured from the ceiling.
My mother dragged me behind a reinforced cabinet while Ross and Hayes took positions near the shelter door.
My father disconnected the monitor transmitter.
Too late.
Kane’s men were already above us.
The shelter had one secondary exit.
A narrow ventilation shaft leading beneath the cemetery chapel.
My mother handed Ross the evidence drives.
“You take Emily.”
Ross shook his head.
“We move together.”
“There is not enough time.”
Gunfire struck the outer door.
The metal bowed inward.
I looked at my mother.
“You don’t get to disappear again.”
Her eyes closed briefly.
“I deserve that.”
Another impact shook the room.
My father opened the ventilation hatch.
Hayes entered first.
Ross directed me toward it.
My injured leg refused to bend.
The shaft was too narrow to crawl normally.
My father pushed from behind while Hayes pulled from the front.
The baby pressed painfully beneath my ribs.
I heard my mother firing through the shelter door.
Then my father stopped moving.
“Thomas!” she shouted.
I turned as far as the shaft allowed.
My father had remained behind.
“I’ll bring her,” he said.
My mother stared at him.
“Go.”
“Not again.”
He sealed the hatch between us.
I screamed and struck the metal.
“Dad!”
Ross dragged me forward.
“We cannot stop.”
Gunfire filled the shelter behind us.
Then an explosion.
The shaft shook.
Dust choked the air.
I crawled until my palms bled.
We emerged beneath the chapel floor.
Hayes forced open a trapdoor.
Morning light entered.
Agents loyal to Ross secured the building.
Not FBI command.
A joint Department of Justice task force he had contacted outside normal channels.
They pulled me from the shaft.
“Where are my parents?”
Nobody answered.
The shelter entrance had collapsed.
Rescue crews began digging.
Kane’s convoy tried to escape the cemetery.
State police blocked the gates.
A black armored vehicle crashed through the fence.
Ross identified Kane inside.
He ordered pursuit.
I refused to leave the chapel.
Two hours passed.
Then three.
Finally, rescue workers opened a path into the shelter.
My father emerged first on a stretcher.
Burns covered one side of his body.
Alive.
I ran toward him.
“Mom?”
His eyes filled.
“She was behind me.”
Workers entered again.
They returned carrying no stretcher.
Only my mother’s coat.
Blood covered the sleeve.
No body.
Ross examined the collapsed rear wall.
A second hidden tunnel had been opened from outside.
Someone had taken her.
My father looked at the coat.
“Kane.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Kane’s calm voice said,
“Your mother understands sacrifice.”
Behind him, she cried out.
I gripped the phone.
“What do you want?”
“The sequence.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You will.”
A video arrived.
My mother sat inside a moving vehicle with a black hood over her head.
May you like
Kane continued.
“At sunrise tomorrow, your child dies.”
