Chapter 13 - The Last Stand on the Ridge
"Hang on!" Claire shouted, slamming her foot onto the accelerator.
The old truck surged forward, tires spinning violently against the slick mud before biting into the gravel. Trent stood motionless in the center of the narrow logging road, raising the combat shotgun with his single functioning arm.
*BOOM!*
The windshield spider-webbed with white fractures as the blast tore through the passenger side safety glass. Clara ducked down instinctively, shielding Lily beneath her body. Glass showered over her back like frozen hail.
Claire didn't flinch. She aimed the heavy steel bumper of the pickup directly at her brother’s chest.
Trent fired a second shot, blowing out the truck’s front left tire. The vehicle lurched violently to the side, fishtailing out of control, the steering wheel violently whipping out of Claire's grip. The truck smashed sideways into a massive hemlock tree, the impact throwing both women forward against the dashboard.
The engine sputtered and died in a hiss of steam and radiator fluid.
Silence descended over the ravine, broken only by the steady drum of rain against the crushed hood. Clara pushed herself up, groaning in pain. Lily was bruised and terrified, but conscious and breathing.
Outside, the crunch of heavy boots on wet gravel approached the driver’s side door.
Claire reached under the seat, her hands frantically searching for a weapon, but came up empty. Her shotgun had been left in the cabin.
The driver’s side door was violently ripped off its damaged latch from the outside. Trent stood there, his face covered in lacerations, his eyes bulging with psychotic rage. He reached in with a bloodstained combat knife, grabbing Claire by her jacket collar and dragging her out into the mud.
"You should have burned with the cabin, sister," Trent growled, pressing the blade against her throat.
"Trent, please!" Clara screamed, kicking open the passenger door and scrambling out into the mud, pulling Arthur’s snub-nosed revolver from her hoodie pocket with both hands. "Let her go! It’s over! The money is gone! The bunker is destroyed!"
Trent turned his head slowly toward Clara, sneering through bloody teeth. "The money doesn't matter anymore, Clara. Alan destroyed my life. I'm going to take everything he built, starting with his family."
He raised the knife.
A sharp, deafening gunshot cracked through the mountain fog from the tree line fifty yards to their left.
Trent froze. A clean, circular red hole appeared directly in the center of his tactical chest plate. He looked down in disbelief as the knife slipped from his fingers into the mud.
A second shot followed immediately, piercing his shoulder. Trent collapsed into the gravel like a felled tree, motionless.
Clara swung her revolver toward the darkness of the trees, her breath catching in her throat.
A figure emerged slowly from the mist, holding a long-range hunting rifle. He wore an old oilskin duster, his face obscured by the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat.
"You always were a terrible shot, Trent," a deep, gravelly voice echoed.
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It wasn't Mark.
It was Arthur Vance. The old man held his broken wrist against his chest, his rifle smoking in his good hand, his blind eyes somehow locked directly onto his dying son.
