Chapter 12
The beam of the tactical flashlight swept across the bedroom walls like a searchlight, catching the dust motes suspended in the cold air.
"There! By the bed!" a deep, modulated voice barked from the doorway.
David didn't hesitate. He grabbed Clara by the arm, guiding her down the steep wooden ladder into the pitch-black root cellar just as the first round from a silenced firearm embedded itself deeply into the wooden floorboards beside his boot. Leo scrambled down the ladder right behind them, his small hands gripping the rungs with astonishing agility despite the chaos.
David slammed the heavy wooden trapdoor shut above them, sliding the heavy iron bolt into place just as a heavy fist hammered violently against the wood from the bedroom floor.
"David! Open this door!" an operative shouted from above, the sound muffled by the thick timber.
Pitch darkness enveloped them in the cellar, smelling of damp earth, stored potatoes, and aged oak barrels. Clara was breathing in ragged, hysterical gasps, trying desperately to muffle the cries of the newborn baby pressed against her chest.
"Shh, baby, shh," Clara whispered, tears streaming down her face as she pressed her back against the cool stone wall of the subterranean room.
"Keep moving," David urged in a harsh whisper, his hand outstretched in the dark, guiding Clara and Leo toward the far corner of the cellar where an old stone drainage tunnel led out toward the creek bed behind the property.
David knew this tunnel well; he had played in these very underground passages when he was a boy, long before he understood the dark reality of the family he was born into. He reached out and found the rusted iron lever of the hidden exit hatch, pulling down with all his weight. The heavy iron mechanism gave way with a loud, protesting screech that echoed through the stone walls.
Behind them, the sound of splintering wood signaled that the operatives had forced the heavy trapdoor open from above. A bright beam of light pierced the darkness of the cellar from the top of the ladder.
"They're in the cellar!" a voice yelled.
"Out! Go, go, go!" David shouted, shoving Leo through the open drainage hatch into the cool night air outside.
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Clara scrambled through the narrow opening, clutching the infant tightly against her chest, with David following immediately behind them, pulling the heavy iron grate shut and locking it from the outside just as heavy boots hit the dirt floor of the cellar behind them.
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