Chapter 5 - The Iron Gates
The afternoon sun was beginning its slow descent toward the western ridge, casting long, skeletal shadows across the estate's gravel drive. I had managed to slip away from the main house under the pretext of checking the laundry lines near the east courtyard. My fingers were cramped around the plastic body of a battered landline receiver tucked into the damp utility closet behind the boiler room.
The phone clicked three times before a raspy voice answered from the local county dispatcher twenty miles away.
"County Sheriff's Office. State your emergency."
"I need a welfare check," I whispered fiercely into the mouthpiece, pressing my ear hard against the plastic to block out the rhythmic thumping of the boilers. "Estate on Clearwater Ridge. The main gates off Route Nine. A child is being—"
Before I could finish the sentence, the line went dead with a sharp, electronic squeal. A heavy hand slammed down against the wooden wall right beside my head, crushing the telephone wire between thick knuckles. I spun around with a gasp. The taller man in the black suit stood blocking the narrow doorway, his jaw clenched, his eyes blazing with cold fury.
"Who were you calling?" he demanded, his voice dangerously low.
"No one. I was checking the service line," I stammered, trying to sidestep past him down the narrow utility corridor.
He didn't move an inch. He simply reached out, his hand gripping my forearm with a bruising tightness that made me cry out softly. "You don't make calls from this extension without authorization. The master gave you a choice, and you decided to play a game you can't possibly win."
Before he could drag me back toward the main house, a sharp blast of an air horn echoed from the front iron gates down the winding drive. Headlights cut a bright, jagged swath through the dusk as a black-and-white county cruiser pulled up against the stone pillars, its overhead lights flashing a brilliant, silent warning against the towering wrought iron.
The guard froze, his grip loosening on my arm as he stared toward the front entrance in disbelief. Someone had answered the call after all, or the dispatcher had routed a patrol car before the line dropped. But as I watched through the small wired-glass window of the utility door, the cruiser didn't rush up the drive. Instead, a sleek black sedan pulled out from the shadows of the portico, cutting off the sheriff's vehicle before it could clear the gates.
A tall man in a sharp gray suit—the estate's primary legal counsel—stepped out of the sedan, adjusting his cuffs with leisurely arrogance as he walked over to greet the deputy through the cruiser's rolled-down window. Within two minutes, the flashing lights on the police cruiser blinked out. The patrol car put its cruiser in reverse and backed slowly down the dark highway, swallowed up by the gathering twilight.
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The guard turned his cold eyes back down on me, a grim, humorless smirk touching his lips. "Still think help is coming?" he whispered.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. The official channels were closed, the local authorities had been turned away at the gate with a polite wave of a lawyer's pen, and the sun had completely vanished behind the ridge. If we were going to survive this night, I was going to have to find a way out of the sunlit mansion that didn't rely on anyone else's permission.
