Chapter 2 - The Sky Tears Open
Three minutes passed in agonizing torment.
Carter had dragged me by my forearm to the hallway, throwing me onto the rug near the front door so the blood wouldn't seep deeper into his mother’s precious kitchen tile. Every movement tore through my uterine wall. Black spots danced before my vision. I closed my eyes, humming softly, desperately, to the son fighting for his life beneath my ribs.
*Hold on, little one. Please. Grandpa is coming. Just hold on.*
“Look at her,” Eleanor sneered, standing over me with her arms folded. “Pretending to faint. When I was carrying Carter, I worked forty hours a week and attended galas. Women these days have no stamina, no class, and no backbone.”
Carter was pouring himself a glass of scotch at the wet bar. “Don’t worry, Mother. Tomorrow morning I’m filing for an immediate annulment on grounds of domestic fraud and marital abandonment. I’ll make sure Richard assigns the case to Judge Harrington. She won’t get a single penny. We’ll take whatever little she has left to pay for the deep cleaning of the carpets.”
He took a slow sip, turning to smirk at me. “Do you hear me, Clara? You walked into my life with nothing, and you’re leaving with less.”
Suddenly, the crystal decanter in Carter’s hand began to rattle.
The scotch rippled.
A low, subterranean hum vibrated through the floorboards, rattling the chandelier crystals overhead. It wasn’t an earthquake. The frequency was too rhythmic, too deliberate.
“What is that?” Eleanor frowned, looking toward the ceiling. “Did the neighbors hire night construction crews again? In an upscale neighborhood like this?”
The hum deepened into a chest-thumping roar. The entire house shuddered. The pictures on the wall tilted askew; a framed photograph of Carter receiving his law degree crashed down onto the hardwood floor, the glass shattering into dust.
“What the hell?” Carter set his glass down, spilling scotch across the counter.
Outside, the quiet, manicured streets of our gated Alexandria neighborhood exploded with blinding white light.
It wasn't a car. It wasn't an ambulance.
Twin high-intensity searchlights flooded through the living room windows, obliterating the darkness, casting stark, razor-sharp shadows across the walls. The wind outside roared into a hurricane, violently whipping the century-old oak trees on the lawn.
A Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk—bearing no military insignia, painted matte radar-absorbent black—hovered barely thirty feet above our manicured front lawn. The downdraft tore the decorative shrubs out of the earth and smashed the patio furniture against the brick facade.
“A... a helicopter?” Eleanor shrieked, backing away from the windows, shielding her face from the blinding light. “Who authorized a helicopter on our lawn?!”
Before Carter could move, the street outside erupted with sirens—not the familiar two-tone wails of local police, but the low, terrifying air-raid sirens of federal convoy vehicles.
Six black Chevy Suburbans, armored and outfitted with front-mounted ramming bars, blew through the wrought-iron neighborhood security gates without slowing down. They slid to a synchronized halt around our driveway, completely sealing off both ends of the street.
Carter’s face went completely bloodless. “This... this has to be a mistake. Is it a drug raid? Did they get the wrong address?”
He ran toward the front door, his hand reaching for the deadbolt. “Hey! You’ve got the wrong house! I’m an attorney! My uncle is—”
*BOOM!*
The heavy oak front door didn't swing open—it disintegrated.
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A hydraulic breaching charge blew the frame straight into the entryway. Carter was thrown backward onto his spine, choking on smoke, splinters, and drywall dust.
***
