Chapter 14 - Fifteen Minutes
Fifteen minutes.
Four hundred people.
One sealed estate.
Explosives beneath the foundation.
My father moved instantly.
“Security, begin blast evacuation protocol.”
The response came.
“Exits remain locked.”
“Break the barriers.”
“They’re reinforced.”
“Then breach the windows.”
“Already attempting.”
Rebecca studied the schematics.
“There are underground maintenance tunnels.”
My father looked at her.
“Where?”
“Two.”
“One beneath the kitchen.”
“One beneath the east greenhouse.”
“Capacity?”
“Maybe one person every three seconds.”
Four hundred people.
Not enough time.
I grabbed the radio.
“Ballroom.”
The security chief answered.
“Go.”
“Move children, elderly guests, and injured people toward the greenhouse tunnel first.”
“Understood.”
“Everyone else stays calm.”
A furious businessman shouted in the background.
I heard pushing.
Screaming.
Panic would kill people before the explosion did.
I ran toward the elevator.
My father followed.
Rebecca shouted,
“Where are you going?”
“To the ballroom.”
“Evelyn.”
“If they panic, people die.”
The elevator rose.
When the doors opened, chaos hit us.
Guests shoved toward the east corridor.
Security struggled to maintain order.
I climbed onto a table.
“STOP.”
No one listened.
I grabbed a champagne bottle and smashed it against a metal tray.
The crack silenced several people.
“Listen to me.”
More heads turned.
“There is a way out.”
That changed everything.
“But if you stampede, you will block the tunnel and people will die.”
A man shouted,
“We’re all going to die anyway.”
I looked directly at him.
“No.”
My voice hardened.
“We are not.”
The confidence was partly an act.
But they needed it.
“You ignored me when one man attacked me.”
“You looked away because helping me was inconvenient.”
Several faces dropped.
“Now every person in this room understands what helplessness feels like.”
Silence.
“So you have a choice.”
“You can become animals and climb over each other.”
“Or you can prove you are better than what you were ten minutes ago.”
A woman near the front took a child’s hand.
An older man stepped aside.
Someone began organizing rows.
Then another.
My father looked at me.
Pride flickered through his fear.
The evacuation began.
My timer showed eleven minutes.
I turned toward him.
“I need to find Mom.”
“I’ll go.”
“No.”
“Evelyn.”
“She asked for me.”
He stared at me.
Then nodded.
“I’m still coming.”
We ran toward the east wing.
Eight minutes.
We found the medical room locked.
My father shot the electronic panel.
The door opened.
A woman sat against the wall.
Gray streaked her dark hair.
Blood stained her blouse.
For nine years, I had carried an image of my mother inside my head.
Frozen at fifty-one.
This woman was older.
Thinner.
Scarred.
But I knew her.
“Mom.”
Elizabeth Vale looked up.
Her eyes filled.
“Hi, baby.”
Every wall I had built broke.
I dropped beside her.
She pulled me into her arms.
For one second, there was no Orpheus.
No bomb.
No Damian.
No Halden.
There was only my mother.
Alive.
Then she whispered,
“We have six minutes.”
Reality returned.
My father stood in the doorway.
Elizabeth looked at him.
His face collapsed.
“Liz.”
She smiled faintly.
“You look terrible.”
He laughed through tears.
“So do you.”
She reached into her pocket.
A small device.
“The real detonator is paired with Halden’s heartbeat monitor.”
I stared.
“So if he dies?”
“The charges trigger instantly.”
My father whispered,
“We can’t kill him.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“And we can’t let him leave.”
I looked at the timer.
Five minutes.
“Where is he?”
Elizabeth pointed downward.
“Not below us.”
May you like
She looked toward the ballroom.
“He’s been in plain sight all night.”
