Chapter 19 - THE TRAP AT THE COTTAGE
Outside, Vance and his two men crept through the damp pine needles, dark suppressed pistols held low at their sides.
"No flashlights," Vance hissed. "Clear the living room first. Make it look like a home invasion."
They kicked through the plywood repair on the front door, sweeping their weapons into the dark living room.
PUB! PUB!
Suppressed rounds tore through the velvet armchair where Julian had been sitting hours earlier. But the room was empty—except for the soft, crackling fire in the hearth.
Suddenly, a heavy iron lever clicked behind the kitchen pantry.
Elowen had opened the cottage's old gravity-fed river pump valve—a heavy industrial mechanism her late husband had installed decades ago to pull high-pressure river water into the home's heating coils during freeze warnings.
FSHHHHHHH!
A roaring torrent of boiling steam and high-pressure water exploded out of the kitchen radiator pipe, instantly filling the narrow living room with a blinding, blistering cloud of white vapor!
"Argh!" one of Vance's men shrieked, dropping his weapon as the scalding steam seared his hands and face.
Out of the blinding white haze, Julian materialized like a shadow. He tackled the second operative, driving him shoulder-first into the stone fireplace hearth, disarming him in a single fluid strike.
Vance stumbled backward out the broken front door into the rain, coughing violently, raising his pistol to fire blind into the doorway—
CLANG!
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Elowen stepped out from the porch shadows, swinging her heavy iron fireplace poker with all the strength in her calloused, working hands. The iron bar struck Vance’s wrist, sending his weapon flying into the wet mud. Before he could recover, Julian lunged through the doorway, slamming Vance face-first onto the wooden porch steps and pinning his arms behind his back.
In the distance, the wail of approaching sirens echoed across the river bridge—called fifteen minutes prior by federal marshals who had been keeping a discrete perimeter watch on the cottage.
