Escape (Chronicles of Hart) (23 page)

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King handed Grace his flashlight as she climbed over the clutter and stacks of boxes into her old room. The years had changed it, yet underneath the piles of boxes and swaths of fabric over the furniture, it was still the room she remembered. It still felt safe to her and she could tell by the dusty white sheets over one of the bed posts that the fire had not damaged her room in the slightest. She groped over to the pile covering the closet door, struggling as teetering boxes threatened to collapse in on her and plumes of dust wafted up in clouds whenever she brushed past anything too closely. Ethan was already moving things quickly into another pile. She began picking up boxes and moving them aside, trying to hold her breath against the thickness of the air. Soon the door was clear enough for them to wedge open, getting inside was another story. Grace flashed her light inside to assess the situation. The closet was filled with dusty clothes and shoes none of them belonging to her. Old work boots and hole-filled dress shoes littered the space in mounds, toppling over into the free space where the door had swung open.

Grace climbed over them passing a couple of larger pairs out through the door for Ethan to discard. She felt along the back wall for the catch that would open the secret compartment. It clicked and the back wall swung away from her. Shoes collapsed into the new space. Grace shoved them aside, tossing more out of the closet door for Ethan to move. She crawled forward flashing her light at the hardwood in the small cavity passing back several more shoes to make more room as she tried to find the niche. She tried three floorboards before finding the right one. It was stiffer to pull back than when she had used it ten years ago to hide these files. Squishing her hand into the tiny crevasse she felt the stack, dusty and slippery. One by one she twisted the files out, placing them in a pile beside her. It was a tedious process because she had to roll each file up with one hand to fit it through the small opening.

“What’s going to happen after you get the files?” Ethan asked while Grace dug through the closet.

King scratched his chin, “Take them in. The bureau will start a case against Hart...” he looked at the closet door. The dim light of his flashlight bounced off the wall. “You and Grace will be put into protective custody until the case comes to trial. And after all this, you two are going to be heavily guarded. I think you might need it...” his eyes went wide as he shook his head in disbelief of the events of the previous days.

“She’ll be safe though...” Ethan
asked concern rising in his voice, too low for Grace to hear over the creaking of the boards and the subtle squeaking of the shoes under her knees.

“You will
both
be safe,” King assured, “I’ll make sure of it,” he promised, with definite intention. Ethan felt a surge of relief, he truly believed in agent King’s word. The man had gone through hell and back to help him rescue Grace and he was willing to bet their safety was going to be a similar adventure over the next several months as things came to terms with Hart’s business associates. Dangerous people were going to be coming out of the woodwork and he and Grace were surely the ones with bulls eyes painted on their heads. The protection of the bureau was imperative. A point he had stressed to agent King even before they had launched their over the wall assault in the first place, King now understood why.

Platt and Peters had called in an entourage to escort them to safety after they left the Evans estate. With all the trials that had pressed them over the last two days, they took extra precaution and insisted on the armoured vehicles. Grace and Ethan were going straight to a safe house inside the local bureau building where they could ensure their protection and well being on a round the clock basis. They would be assessed from there and moved out accordingly, it was bound to be a long journey ahead of them.

***

Twenty minutes later Grace emerged from the closet with a stack of paper. Her hands were raw with splinters and paper cuts. Her eyes red from the dust clouds she stirred every time she lifted a folder through the cracks. She held the flashlight in her teeth, teetering over the shoes as it pointed at the floor in a blue beam. Her arms were loaded with the now folded and worn pages tucked into their soft manila folders for what little protection they had provided against the elements. It was a lucky thing her closet had remained untouched by the fire, or the water damage caused by putting it out. Hart had certainly had the right idea trying to burn the house to ashes. These papers were worth more than the house itself, a sprawling mansion put into perspective against a stack of paper.

“The mother load,” whispered King, holding his hand out to help Grace back through the pile and into a clearing in the bedroom. She spit the flashlight into his hand so he could hold it up for her, giving her a chance to check her footing as she crossed over the teetering boxes and hap hazardously piled chairs, covered in drooping linens. As she fumbled her way through to the door she sighed in relief, looking longingly to her guest bed covered in dust and still waiting for her. She yearned to crawl up in it and wait for this all to wash over like a storm filled with lightning and thunder. She turned back to the door and continued on, away from the bed.

It had taken her ten years to get these into the right hands and as she passed the pile over to King she felt relief washing over her.
Let someone else worry about these files for a while,
she thought, letting the flimsy pile of papers fall into Kings waiting arms. He looked at her with wide eyes, peeking into the first file he skimmed past a few lines, mouth dropping. He now held her father’s hit list from ten years ago. Ethan’s fathers name sat at the top with a red line drawn through it. Grace assumed many of the names that followed were familiar to King as he muttered under his breath in awe at the first page on the stack. Normally her father would burn these writings after a meeting, leaving it all in his head with no paper trail was always safer. However extenuating circumstances had left him rushing from his office as Grace hid in a cupboard fearful of being found. When she had approached his desk in horror after having heard the dealings behind his oak doors for the first time, this was the list that had caught her attention. She had intended to take it straight to Ethan for interpretation, she hadn’t known how dangerous those papers would be in her hands or that the consequences of looking at them would be life-long. Her father had gotten to her first.

Taking Ethan’s hand in hers, she smiled and pulled him in for a hug over a mound of sheets. They filtered back out into the hallway clamouring over the pile of discarded refuse Ethan had tossed across the room to free up the closet doorway. The hallway seemed surprisingly cheerful now that they were about to leave the desolate house, finally in possession of the one thing that Hart couldn’t dispute; his own written accounts and a daughter who wouldn’t stay buried. Grace almost walked with a spring in her step as she danced through the scattered junk on the hall and landing. If the banister didn’t look about ready to go she would gleefully slide down it for nostalgia’s sake. She vowed that if she made it out of this nightmare she would come back and slide down the railing, after jumping on her old bed one last time.

***

Hart pulled up behind the battered SUV’s that were falling to pieces in front of the Evans’ estate. As he stepped from the car he pulled his gun out checking the chamber quietly for bullets. He held it at his side tucked up into his suit sleeve. Hart looked to the decaying house, snarling at the charred window frames and he hoped he had done enough damage. He had known those pages were here but it was awfully hard to burn a house down twice without raising suspicion. If the fire didn’t do the job, perhaps the water from putting out the blaze had helped destroy them enough to make the pages
inadmissible as evidence.  The front steps had lost their grandeur to him long before they had started to decay. There had come a day when he was no longer welcome at this place and he could feel it creeping over him as he looked at the gaping door. With a sharp nod to his accomplice he started up the steps two at a time. The door was ajar and he stepped through as the pounding footsteps of his daughter and her companions reached the bottom of the winding staircase talking amongst themselves with a prideful banter, unaware of his presence. Hart was taken back for a moment, remembering the same fiery haired little girl prancing gleefully down those very stairs to greet him after long business trips filled with murder and pain. For a brief moment he regretted what he had turned her in to. Looking at her now however, he could see that she was still the same wide eyed girl he had loved before she betrayed him.

“Hello Grace
,” he drawled stopping in the centre of the grand foyer with his feet resting on a large crack that lined the otherwise breathtaking marble floor. Hart felt like he was standing at the centre of her universe now. They couldn’t leave without passing him; it was time that they faced each other at long last.

“Father,”
her voice was commanding and dark. She took the final step standing at the base of the stairs before her companions like a cold statue.

“And what
brings you to the Evans’ estate?” he smirked, tapping his foot impatiently at the required pleasantries. “It appears I should have put a little more effort into burning the place down,” He chuckled as Grace boldly approached him.

“It feels nice to be home.
” Grace watched the disappointment wash quickly over her father’s face at the comment. He had never been home when she was young. She had spent most of her time here with Ethan.

Grace paused five feet from her father. The pale moonlight dimly lit the foyer through the open main doors. The light hit Grace, lighting her up like a ghostly angel standing before her father looking for justice. She stood still with her hands at her side. Damp clothing, ripped and torn, hung from her delicate frame like wings draped over her back. There was a gleam in her eyes that held Hart
’s gaze for a moment too long. Her presence was intimidating, her willpower horrifying.

“It is over
,” she declared, standing her ground as her father lifted his hand and pulled the trigger.

FINALE

Grace fell delicately to the ground like a petal in the pale moon light. The bullet had grazed her waist twisting her like a ballerina as she tumbled. She landed facing Ethan at the foot of the stairs with her matted hair draped across the floor catching the moonlight in its tangled locks.

Hart walked to his fallen daughter looking down on her with pleasure. “It’s not over until I say it is.” He hissed.  Snapping his fingers over his shoulder, his henchman walked in. He was a burly and intimidating man under any other circumstances. However, he looked scared to be entering the dilapidated home. Even more terrified to see that he was up against the three men at the stairs, and now with the two coming back into the foyer from the kitchen the full gravity of his situation had sunk in. He stood his ground like a good thug waiting for Hart’s direction.

Ethan ran to Grace, holding her hand he whispered to her, “Don’t give up yet, Grace. I need you. Don’t give up, please.”As he brushed her hair from her face careful not to touch her too harshly. He hadn’t seen where the bullet had struck and was terrified that these were his final moments with her, “I love you,” he whispered, leaning in so only she could hear him in the chaos. Ethan closed his eyes for a moment holding his head in to Graces soft hair. His breath caught as he tried to breathe. Grief washed over him before he looked down to see Grace looking back up into his eyes smiling through the pain with tears in her eyes. 

Hart looked down on the two of them, disgusted by the boy’s dedication to his snivelling daughter. He looked to the armed men standing at the base of the stairs, too slow to have stopped him and he smiled with satisfaction.

Grace looked into Ethan’s deep grey eyes and she knew she wanted to spend forever unraveling the life behind them. She didn’t want to miss another minute of time with him and she couldn’t give up now.  Grace gripped his hand tight, holding it as she stood with her other hand clutching at her side stifling the flow of blood. She held Ethan close glaring daggers at her father and his henchman. Standing her ground she walked towards him. He staggered slightly taking a step back, not expecting Grace to have so much fight left in her. Platt had stepped between Grace and her father, holding his gun firmly at her father’s head. “Drop the weapon, sir” he demanded in his most official voice.

King hung in back with the stack of files, hiding them from sight behind the rickety banister while he talked in hurried hushed tones on the phone pressed against his ear. His eyes darted across the room, taking in the whole scene several times as he described every detail of the mess to the technician on the other end of the line.

Ethan wrapped his arm around Grace, holding her up. He knew she was trying to be strong so he let her stand on her own, staying close if she needed him. She looked as though
she
was supporting
him
and he smiled at the thought of having her close to him when this all blew over. He had missed her and he hadn’t known how much until her father had struck her down before him. Ethan wasn’t going anywhere and he wasn’t about to let Grace out of his sight any time soon.