Chapter 7: Shadows on the Wire**
Two days passed in quiet serenity. For the first time in his life, Marcus learned how to make pancakes, braid hair, and listen to four-year-old logic about how squirrels talk to each other. Lily brought color into a life painted entirely in grayscale. Her innocent laughter inside the old wooden cabin felt like an antidote to fifteen years of darkness.
However, peace is a luxury men like Marcus rarely keep.
On the third afternoon, while Lily was drawing on scrap paper near the fireplace, the silent alarm on Marcus’s phone vibrated against his hip. The remote tripwires at the edge of the mountain road had been severed.
Marcus calmly walked over to the desk, sliding a concealed Glock into his waistband and securing a heavy hunting rifle under his arm.
"Lily," he said calmly, kneeling beside her. "Do you remember the game we practiced yesterday?"
Lily looked up from her crayon drawing of three stick figures standing outside a cabin. Her hazel eyes grew wide, but she nodded bravely. "The burrow game."
"That's right. Go down into the pantry cellar, close the trapdoor, and don't make a peep until I knock three times. Can you do that for me?"
"Yes, Marcus," she whispered, grabbing her bear and darting toward the hidden floor hatch in the kitchen.
May you like
As soon as the trapdoor sealed shut, Marcus turned toward the front porch. The forest outside had gone unnaturally quiet.
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