Chapter 7
The glowing red laser dot danced erratically across the floral wallpaper, climbing steadily up the plaster toward the framed family portraits hanging above the mantle. Evelyn froze in the center of the living room, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The chaotic events of the evening—the spilled orange juice, the locked balcony door, the furious confrontation, and the mysterious lawyer at the front door—suddenly coalesced into a terrifying, coherent threat.
"Leo, get down on the floor right now!" Evelyn barked, lunging across the room and tackling the boy off the sofa, shielding his small body beneath her own against the wooden floorboards.
From the front hallway, the heavy oak door creaked open further. Heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood. Marcus Thorne stepped into the living room, his sharp eyes instantly locking onto the red laser dot as it hovered over the sofa cushions where Leo had been sitting only a second before.
"Down!" Marcus shouted, dropping into a tactical crouch near the entryway, his professional demeanor instantly shedding to reveal a man accustomed to high-stakes danger. "Somebody cut the porch light!"
Before anyone could move, the sharp, deafening crack of a silenced gunshot ripped through the front window. Glass exploded inward in a glittering cascade of jagged shards, raining down over the sofa and the floorboards. A heavy thud echoed into the wall just inches above Evelyn’s head, followed by the dull hum of a laser sight sweeping frantically across the room once more before abruptly blinking out.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second, their red and blue lights flashing against the rain-streaked windows outside.
Evelyn held Leo tightly, her hands trembling as she checked him over for injuries, her voice breaking as she whispered frantic reassurances into his hair. "You're okay, baby. I've got you. Don't look at the glass."
Marcus scrambled across the floor, pressing his back against the wall beneath the shattered window, pulling a sleek, encrypted satellite phone from his jacket pocket. He tapped a single button, speaking in a rapid, hushed code that Evelyn couldn't decipher over the ringing in her ears.
"The extraction team is three minutes out," Marcus said, looking over at Evelyn with grim determination. "Nyah didn't just lock a kid out on a balcony tonight, Mrs. Vance. She stumbled into something much bigger than a domestic dispute, and whoever is backing her corporate ascension just realized that your grandson saw something he was never supposed to see."
Evelyn’s blood ran cold. She pulled Leo up into her arms, ignoring the crunch of broken glass beneath her slippers. "He was playing with his tablet on the balcony last night," she whispered, a sudden, horrifying realization dawning on her. "He... he recorded something on his phone through the glass."
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Marcus’s eyes widened sharply. "Where is the phone?"
Leo reached into his light blue pajama pocket with a shaking hand and pulled out the cracked, glowing smartphone, handing it to Marcus like it was a live grenade.
