Chapter 7 - THE GUN IN THE BASEMENTThe beam of the mayor’s flashlight was so bright it burned my retinas, turning the dark crawlspace into a blinding white tunnel where the only things that mattered were the black barrel of the Glock and the steady, unblinking glare of the man holding it.
"Dad," Connor whimpered from behind his father's shoulder, his hands clenched tight into the pockets of his designer jacket. "Dad, what are you doing? You said we were just going to talk to them. You said we'd scare them into giving the card back."
"Shut up, Connor," the mayor barked without taking his eyes off me. "Go back to the car. Wait by the ignition."
"I'm not leaving!" Connor shouted, his voice cracking with panic. "You've got a gun! You said you weren't going to use it!"
"I said do as you're told!" Mayor Whitmore roared, his voice bouncing off the damp stone walls with enough force to make Mason flinch. Connor shrank back into the shadows of the stairs, muttering under his breath, but he didn't run. He just stood there, clutching his phone, watching his father cross a line there was no coming back from.
The mayor stepped closer, the rubber soles of his oxfords squelching softly in the mud.
"Elena," he said, his tone dropping back into that smooth, reasonable baritone that had won him three terms in office. "You always were too smart for your own good. I gave you eleven years of steady pay, health insurance, a roof over your boy's head. And how do you repay me? By digging up bones that were meant to stay buried."
My mother didn't cower. She stepped in front of me again, her small frame shielding my chest from the gun barrel, her hand clutching the federal confession paper so tightly it tore slightly at the corner.
"You killed my husband, Richard," she said, her voice shaking with a cold, absolute fury. "And you killed Arthur before him. For what? So you could pave over a wetland and put your name on a plaque?"
"Progress has a cost, Elena," the mayor said, his mouth twisting into a humorless smile. "Every empire is built on something that had to be buried first. Your husband didn't want to play ball. He wanted to blow the whistle, ruin the town's credit rating, and leave thousands of families without jobs or property values. I didn't murder him. The river did what the river always does."
"The river didn't have your signature on the intake logs," I shouted from behind my mother, stepping out into the light. "I have the micro SD card in my pocket, Mayor. The police already have copies uploaded to the state cloud server. Even if you pull that trigger right now, everyone in this state is going to know what you did."
The mayor’s eyes flicked to mine. For a fraction of a second, the calm facade cracked—just enough to reveal the desperate, cornered animal hiding behind the expensive suit and the campaign smiles.
"You think the state police care about a dead mechanic and a bitter cleaning lady?" he laughed, a short, sharp bark of sound. "They're my fraternity brothers, Daniel. They golf with me on Sundays. By tomorrow morning, this whole thing will be filed away as a domestic dispute gone wrong—a tragic break-in at the municipal archives by a troubled teenager with a history of disciplinary issues at school."
He shifted his grip on the Glock, raising the barrel just an inch higher until it was level with my forehead.
"Now," he whispered, "take the card out of your pocket with two fingers, and drop it in the mud."
My hand slid slowly into my pocket. My fingers brushed against the rough plastic of the micro SD card, then grazed against something else—something cold, heavy, and metallic.
The silver pocket watch.
I had forgotten it was there. The watch my grandfather had given my mother the night he died. The watch that held the key to everything.
I didn't drop the card.
Instead, I pulled my hand out of my pocket in one fluid motion, not with a micro SD card, but with the heavy silver watch, and threw it with all my might straight into the lens of the mayor's flashlight.
Clang!
The heavy metal casing smashed directly into the glass lens, shattering it into a thousand glittering shards and plunging the crawlspace into sudden, absolute darkness, broken only by the dim, flickering glow of Mason’s phone screen near the stairs.
"Agh!" the mayor yelled, stumbling backward as the hot bulb of the shattered flashlight burned his palm.
"Run!" my mother screamed, shoving me hard toward the low stone exit behind the foundation blocks.
We didn't need to be told twice. Mason scrambled through the low opening first, his sneakers kicking up a cloud of dry dust and gravel. I grabbed my mother’s hand, yanking her forward as the sharp report of a gunshot cracked through the damp air behind us, the bullet chipping a chunk of granite off the wall three inches above my head.
Bang!
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"Stay down!" I yelled, diving through the narrow gap into the cold, wet night air just as a second shot ricocheted off the iron grating above our heads.
We hit the wet grass of the library lawn, rolling into the shadow of a massive blue spruce tree as rain began to fall again, turning the world into a blur of gray shadows and flashing blue lights.
