Chapter 10 - The Burner Phone
The digital display on the burner phone sitting on the mahogany floorboards of the master suite glowed with a steady, pulsing green dot.
Eleanor sat in the high-backed velvet armchair near the unlit fireplace, her deep maroon silk robe stained with spilled scotch. Her blonde hair, usually meticulously tied back, fell in tangled strands around her gaunt face. In her right hand, she held an antique double-barreled shotgun, the cold steel barrel resting casually across her lap. Through the shattered French doors leading to the balcony, the distant flashing blue lights of the police cruisers flickered against the night sky, but Eleanor no longer cared about the federal agents or the impending raid.
Her sunken eyes were fixed entirely on the small glowing screen of the burner phone, tracking the precise, linear movement of the red dot as Adrian and Clara's sedan drove away from the mountain cabin toward the state highway.
"Run all you want, my dutiful son," Eleanor whispered hoarsely to the empty room, her voice cracking with manic amusement. "You think a federal badge and a duffel bag of stolen ledgers can wash away the blood of this house?"
She reached down with her left hand, picking up an old landline receiver that had been ripped directly out of the wall jack. She dialed a twelve-digit international number from memory—a number she hadn't used since her husband's suspicious death two years ago.
The line rang twice before a raspy, deep voice answered on the other end, speaking in clipped, accented English.
"The asset is moving," Eleanor said without preamble, her tone dropping into a chilling, businesslike cadence. "They are heading south on Route 9 toward the county line. Eliminate the distraction, but secure the flash drive at all costs."
"The price has doubled, Mrs. Vance," the voice on the other end replied smoothly over the static. "Federal marshals are currently securing the perimeter of your estate. Extraction will require specialized... persuasion."
Eleanor laughed, a sharp, ugly sound that echoed off the high vaulted ceilings. "My accounts may be frozen, but the diamond necklace locked inside the floor safe in the guest house is worth more than your entire mercenary syndicate. Deliver the flash drive to my lawyer's office by dawn, and the combination to the safe is yours."
"Done," the voice clicked off without a polite goodbye.
Eleanor dropped the landline receiver onto the Persian rug. She looked up at the large framed portrait of her late husband hanging above the stone fireplace—the very portrait beneath which Adrian had knelt hours earlier. With a sudden, explosive roar of fury, Eleanor raised the antique shotgun, pulled both triggers simultaneously, and blew the center out of her dead husband's face in a deafening blast of buckshot and flying wood splinters.
Downstairs at the front entrance, the heavy oak doors finally splintered open as Agent Miller and a tactical team of federal marshals breached the foyer.
"Federal agents! Drop the weapon!" the bullhorn echoed from the hallway below.
Eleanor did not flinch. She calmly reached into her robe pocket, pulled out a small silver lighter, and flicked the flame alive, holding it directly beneath the heavy velvet curtain hanging beside the shattered balcony doors.
"If I don't get to keep the kingdom," Eleanor whispered into the rising smoke, "no one does."
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Ten miles away, driving smoothly down the deserted highway, Adrian suddenly slammed his foot on the brake as a massive, unmarked semi-truck pulled directly out from a hidden logging road, blocking all four lanes of asphalt with its trailer completely jackknifed across the road.
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