Chapter 7 - THE CASHMERE COAT
Daniel stepped into the hidden safe, his polished leather shoes clicking against the metal floor.
He didn't look angry. He looked completely dead behind the eyes, stripped of the charming facade he had worn for twenty years. This was the man who had ordered the murder of a building inspector and framed his own wife.
I immediately pushed Noah behind me, shielding his body with my own.
“Let him go, Daniel,” I said, my voice remarkably steady despite the terror threatening to crush my lungs. “He’s your son. Let him walk out of here.”
Daniel sighed, adjusting his grip on the gun. “I can't do that, Caroline. Noah has proven to be entirely too loyal to his grandmother’s memory. It’s tragic, really. A mother and son, tragically killed in a robbery gone wrong at the corporate office.”
Noah gripped the back of my coat, trembling violently.
“You won't get away with this,” I said, clutching the safety inspection reports and the black cashmere coat. “Rebecca is already going to the FBI. She knows you killed her father.”
“Rebecca is an emotional, grieving woman who broke into a bank vault with a stolen gun,” Daniel sneered. “The police are already looking for her. When they find her, she’ll look like a deranged ex-mistress trying to destroy my reputation. No one will believe a word she says.”
He held out his free hand.
“The reports, Caroline. Hand them over.”
I looked down at the papers in my hand. Marcus Vance’s signature. Daniel’s handwritten order to ruin Marcus’s life.
Daniel had destroyed an innocent engineer’s career just to replace him with a bribed inspector. And when that inspector grew a conscience, Daniel killed him too.
“You’re pathetic,” I whispered, looking directly into my husband’s eyes. “You didn't build an empire, Daniel. You built a house of cards. And you’re so terrified of a breeze that you have to hold a gun to your own son.”
Daniel’s jaw locked. The truth stung him deeper than any insult could.
He raised the gun, aiming it directly at my forehead.
“I said, give me the reports.”
I slowly raised my hand, holding the stack of papers toward him.
But as Daniel reached out to take them, I didn't let go.
Instead, I threw the heavy, black cashmere coat directly into his face.
The thick fabric enveloped his head, blinding him for a split second.
I didn't hesitate. I shoved my shoulder hard into the heavy wooden bookshelf door. The heavy mahogany slammed into Daniel’s side, throwing him off balance. The suppressed gun fired, a quiet thwip echoing in the room as the bullet embedded itself harmlessly into the ceiling.
“Run!” I screamed, grabbing Noah’s hand.
We bolted out of the hidden safe and sprinted across the massive corporate office.
“Caroline!” Daniel roared, untangling himself from the coat.
We reached the heavy glass doors of the office, but they were magnetically locked. Daniel had triggered a lockdown when he entered.
I frantically swiped my old ID badge, but the red light flashed angrily. ACCESS DENIED.
I looked around desperately. There was no other exit. We were trapped on the penthouse floor of a glass tower.
Daniel stepped out of the office, his nose bleeding from where the bookshelf had hit him. He raised the gun again, walking slowly toward us with a chilling, predatory calm.
“There’s nowhere to go, Carrie,” Daniel mocked, using the pet name that now made my skin crawl. “Just hand over the papers, and I’ll make it quick.”
I backed up until my spine hit the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the city. We were forty stories up.
I pulled Noah tightly against my chest, shielding his eyes so he wouldn't have to watch his father pull the trigger.
“I love you, sweetheart,” I whispered into my son’s hair.
Daniel stopped ten feet away. He leveled the gun at my chest.
“Goodbye, Caroline.”
Suddenly, the glass window behind us violently shattered.
It wasn't a bullet. It was a massive, heavy iron hook attached to a thick steel cable.
The hook smashed through the reinforced glass, sending shards raining down around us. The freezing wind howled into the room, tearing the art off the walls and sending papers flying in a chaotic cyclone.
Daniel stumbled backward, covering his face to protect his eyes from the flying glass.
I looked out the shattered window.
Hanging suspended outside the building, swinging wildly from the roof crane of the adjacent construction site, was a massive steel beam.
And standing inside the penthouse, having just swung in through the broken window on a safety harness, was Marcus Vance.
The engineer Daniel had tried to destroy.
May you like
Marcus unclipped himself from the harness, holding a heavy steel wrench in his hand. He looked at Daniel, then at me.
“I got your mother’s message, Caroline,” Marcus yelled over the roaring wind.
