Chapter 5 - Ashes and Cold Hard Steel
Marcus swung the crowbar with terrifying force.
I ducked instinctively, the heavy steel whistling through the air an inch above my ear, smashing into the wooden support post behind me with a bone-jarring CRACK. Wood splinters sprayed across my cheek.
Adrenaline surged through my veins. Before he could recover his balance, I slammed the heavy four-D-cell Maglite directly into his ribs.
Marcus grunted, stumbling sideways into the mud, dropping the jerrycan. The puddle of spilled gasoline flared instantly as a stray ember landed on it, sending a wall of yellow fire between us.
"She was going to take everything!" Marcus screamed through the wall of flame, coughing violently on the thick black smoke. "Ten years of building my firm! Ten years of sweat! She found the offshore transfers and went running to a federal prosecutor in Charlotte! She was going to put me in a cage, Sarah!"
"So you shoved her down the oak stairs and broke her neck?!" I yelled back, tears burning my eyes despite the pouring rain. "She was the mother of your child!"
"She slipped!" he lied, though his eyes betrayed the truth. "She wouldn't give me the flash drive! She ran for the stairs, and I grabbed her sweater—she pulled away and lost her balance! It was her fault! She wouldn't just keep her mouth shut!"
"You're a monster," I whispered.
Marcus lunged through the flames, ignoring the heat, tackling me straight into the red clay mud. The flashlight flew from my hand, rolling into the burning shed. His hands clamped around my throat, pressing my head into the freezing mud, cutting off my oxygen.
"You want to know where that drive is?" he snarled, spitting rain into my face as his thumbs dug into my windpipe. "It’s in the floorboards. Burning to ashes right now. And you’re going to burn right alongside it."
Black spots danced across my vision. My lungs screamed for air. I clawed at his face, tearing his skin, but his grip was iron.
Suddenly, a loud metallic THWACK cracked across the back of Marcus’s skull.
Marcus’s eyes rolled back, his grip shattered, and he collapsed sideways into the mud like a felled tree.
Standing behind him in the pouring rain, holding an iron garden spade with both hands, was Uncle Ray, soaked to the skin, breathing hard, with two North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers right behind him, their service weapons drawn.
"Step away from the suspect!" the lead trooper yelled, moving in to cuff Marcus’s limp wrists behind his back.
Uncle Ray dropped the spade, grabbed my arm, and hauled me up out of the freezing mud. "You alright, Sarah?"
I coughed, clutching my bruised throat, pointing frantically at the collapsing shed. "The floorboards! Near the rear workbench—there’s a fireproof box! Don't let it burn!"
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One of the troopers grabbed the fire extinguisher from their cruiser, blasting a path through the flames while Uncle Ray used the crowbar to wrench up the charred oak planks.
Beneath the smoldering beams sat a heavy steel lockbox, coated in soot, completely intact.
