Chapter 9 - Blood on the Snow
The back of the Mercedes SUV smelled of expensive leather, cigar smoke, and cordite.
Vance had thrown Arthur’s body into the snowdrift, dragged Fiona inside the heated carriage house where she had a fighting chance of surviving until the paramedics arrived, and hauled me into the rear cargo area of the idling vehicle.
He ripped off his damp wool coat, rolling it into a crude pillow beneath my head, then stripped off his suit jacket and draped it over my trembling chest.
"I called Fairfield Memorial," Vance said, his hands surprisingly steady as he knelt between my knees. "The ambulance is trying to push up the ridge, but two fallen trees have blocked the lower county road. They’re forty minutes out with chains."
"We don't have forty minutes," I choked out, tears of pain cutting hot tracks through the soot on my cheeks. "Marcus, she's crowning. I can feel her."
"I was an army medic before the Bureau, Serena," he said, his gray eyes locking onto mine with absolute, unshakable calm. "I’ve delivered babies in the back of Humvees under mortar fire in Helmand Province. You and this little girl are going to be fine. Do you hear me? Look at me."
I grabbed his arm, digging my fingernails through his shirt until I felt skin. "Don't let her die, Marcus. Please."
"Nobody dies tonight," he ordered. "Push."
Outside, the mansion continued to burn, lighting the falling snow with an eerie, flickering crimson glow. The roar of the fire was a distant, secondary thing compared to the white-hot agony tearing through my body.
I screamed, bearing down with every ounce of strength left in my battered, bruised frame.
Nine years of holding dying strangers' hands in the trauma bay. Nine years of watching lives slip away in seconds. All of it narrowed down to this single, suffocating moment in the back of an idling SUV in the middle of a blizzard.
"I see the head," Vance said calmly. "One more, Serena. Give me everything you have. Push!"
I arched my back, screaming into the freezing night, channeling every ounce of rage, betrayal, and ferocious maternal instinct into the dark.
Then, the pressure released.
A moment of terrifying, suffocating silence hung in the air.
No sound. Just the wind rocking the heavy SUV on its suspension.
"Marcus?" I sobbed, my voice cracking. "Marcus, why isn't she crying?"
Vance had his fingers in her tiny mouth, clearing the airway with quick, practiced precision. He rubbed her tiny back vigorously with a clean cotton towel he had pulled from the vehicle’s emergency kit.
Then, a thin, wailing cry cut through the darkness.
It was the most beautiful, ferocious sound I had ever heard in my life.
Vance wrapped our daughter in a warm wool blanket, tied and severed the umbilical cord using sterile shears from his medical kit, and placed her gently onto my bare chest.
She was tiny, red-faced, and furious at the world. But her heart was beating against mine, warm and alive.
"A girl," Vance whispered, wiping a streak of soot from his own face, a rare, gentle smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Healthy. Strong lungs."
I held her against me, sobbing uncontrollably, burying my face in the curve of her damp little neck. "I've got you, sweetheart," I whispered into her skin. "I've got you. You're safe."
The rear door of the SUV was suddenly ripped open.
The freezing wind rushed inside.
Standing in the snow, illuminated by the red taillights, was Matthias.
He looked like a ghost returned from the grave. Half of his face was raw, blistering red from the flash burn of the explosion. His hair was singed down to the scalp on one side, his tuxedo jacket gone, his white dress shirt blackened and soaked in melted snow.
In his right hand, he held a heavy, iron fireplace poker he had scavenged from the burning rubble.
His eyes were completely vacant, stripped of sanity, staring at me and the crying bundle on my chest.
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"You took everything," Matthias rasped, his voice a dry, ruined whisper. "You brought that fed into my house. You destroyed my family. You destroyed my life."
He raised the iron poker, stepping toward the tailgate.
