Chapter 63
Connor crossed the room and killed the lights. The only illumination left, the fire in the suspended hearth, threw its dull orange glow across the floor and up the walls.
“Move,” he said, pointing into the kitchen. “And stay low.”
Erin did exactly as he told her, keeping her head down as she slipped past. Connor followed, all his senses on high alert.
Glancing at the tablet, he could see the feed was still holding. The four men had closed the distance. One pair was angling toward the front of the house. The other had drifted wider and was circling to cut off the rear.
Connor looked at the faded runner on the floor and the bump beneath. The crawl space.
Tight, dark, and with no guarantee of a second way out, it wasn’t a fabulous option. But if the men outside breached fast, it might buy Erin a few extra seconds, maybe more. That in and of itself was worth it.
“Listen to me,” he said.
She was watching his face now—not the gun, not the tablet. His face.
“I want you to get in there and no matter what happens, no matter what you hear, I don’t want you to make a sound. Do you understand me?”
She nodded. “Understood.”
Kneeling, he shoved the runner aside, found the iron ring, and pulled. The hatch came up with a quiet screech of warped wood against warped wood. The scent of dirt and cold air rose from below.
Erin peered into the darkness. “How deep is it?”
“A couple feet at most. You got this.”
She lowered herself into the opening as Connor kept one hand on the hatch and the other on his pistol. The crawl space was shallow; barely enough room for her to crouch.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Good. Stay down and stay quiet.”
He eased the hatch back into place and covered it with the runner. Straightening up, he grabbed the tablet and checked the cameras again.
One of the feeds had gone dead.
He stared at the black square for half a second. Was it a transmission failure? Or had someone taken the camera down? Either way, the result was the same.
Moving to the sink, he stayed far enough back from the window not to silhouette himself.
At first he didn’t see anything. Then, off to his left, something passed between the house and the trees. They were here.
Backing away, he moved into the main room and took up a position that gave him a view of both the front door and the short hall leading to the bathroom, while keeping him away from the windows.
It wasn’t much. The teahouse had practically no real cover.
A determined man with a rifle could shoot halfway through the structure without much trouble.
Squatting down behind a wooden sideboard, he slowed his breathing and listened.
For a moment, he heard nothing. Then came the faintest creak from somewhere outside.
It wasn’t from the woods. It was from the house. Someone was testing the porch.
Connor stayed pressed against the sideboard, head on a swivel. Then he heard it again—the board on the front porch.
But a second later, he heard something else—a faint metallic test of the back door latch.
Front and rear. Probing. Coming to a decision.
Or maybe they were testing him; trying to split his attention.
He tightened his grip on his pistol, took a breath, and stayed where he was. The worst he could do was to start shooting too soon. He didn’t need them firing from the outside. He needed them inside. With him.
The front door gave an almost imperceptible shudder in its frame.
Another probe.
Connor shifted his aim toward the kitchen and was greeted by the soft scrape of metal, followed by pressure against the back door. Not enough to force it, just enough to feel whether it would give.
It didn’t.
For half a heartbeat, everything went still. Then the back door exploded inward.