Chapter 11 - THE SMELL OF SULFUR
The word detonator hung in the air of the study like a live high-voltage wire.
Julian’s face went completely bloodless. "What did you say?"
"Get out of the house, Julian! Right now!" Agent Martinez’s voice barked through the speaker, distorted by panic. "The courier had a localized radio-frequency trigger set on a countdown timer. Tyler had a failsafe app on his smartphone! When the deputies arrested him, the signal might have auto-armed if he didn't enter a disarm code every twenty minutes!"
Julian didn't look at the bonds. He didn't look at the safe.
"Mom. Leo. Elena. Move!" Julian screamed.
He grabbed the wheelchair handles with his good right arm, but his broken collarbone gave out, a sharp cry of agony tearing from his throat as his knees buckled.
Elena didn't wait. She shoved Julian aside, grabbed the rubber handgrips of Evelyn’s chair, and spun the heavy steel frame toward the study door. "Leo, grab your dad! Don't look back!"
Leo hooked his shoulder under Julian’s uninjured arm, hauling his father to his feet. Julian was groaning, his teeth grinding together so hard a speck of blood appeared on his lip, but fear drove him forward.
They hit the hallway at a dead sprint.
As they passed the top of the grand staircase, Elena caught the scent.
It was faint at first, then sickly sweet and suffocating—the heavy, rotten-egg stench of mercaptan, the chemical odorant added to natural gas. The basement manifold had already been breached. The entire lower level of the twenty-thousand-square-foot structure was filling with explosive vapor like an enormous underground bomb waiting for a pilot light.
"The elevator is too slow!" Evelyn ordered from the chair, pointing toward the back stairs. "The kitchen exit! Take the exterior ramp!"
"Down the stairs, Elena!" Leo shouted, dragging Julian ahead of them.
Elena pushed the wheelchair down the long tiled corridor toward the west wing service ramp—a wide, concrete incline built specifically for laundry carts and garden equipment.
Her lungs burned. Her legs felt like wet cement. The adrenaline that had carried her through the pool rescue, the wrestling match in the bedroom, and the shooting was beginning to curdle into pure physical exhaustion. But looking down at the gray head of the woman who had trusted her with her life, Elena found another gear.
They burst through the heavy fire doors into the service ramp.
The smell of gas was thicker here, rising from the basement ventilation grates along the exterior wall. A low, hissing roar—like the sound of a dozen coiled snakes—echoed from the floor drains.
"The main switch!" Julian gasped, coughing violently as the fumes hit his throat. "The electrical panel on the wall... if the compressor kicks on for the wine cellar, the spark will—"
Click.
The sound was tiny. A metallic, electronic chirp from the wall-mounted utility panel twenty feet behind them.
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"RUN!" Julian roared.
Elena shoved the wheelchair down the sloping concrete ramp with every ounce of strength left in her body. Evelyn tucked her elbows in, bracing her legs against the footrests. Behind them, Leo shoved Julian through the open exterior iron gate just as the world behind them turned into an apocalyptic wall of orange fire and shattering glass.
