Chapter 7 - The Master of the Cage
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
The sound of a heavy wooden walking cane striking the stone steps echoed down into the damp cellar, rhythmic, unhurried, and chillingly precise.
Ethan stood up slowly, stepping in front of Olivia’s cot, his hand sliding smoothly into his suit jacket to grip the handle of the SIG Sauer. Vance instantly shifted his body, drawing his own weapon and pointing the tactical light directly at the staircase.
In the brilliant white beam of the flashlight, a man stepped onto the bottom stone tread.
He was in his mid-sixties, dressed in an immaculate, dark charcoal wool overcoat with a velvet collar. He carried a silver-topped mahogany cane in his right hand. His hair was silver, meticulously combed back from a high forehead, and behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles sat cold, pale blue eyes that showed no surprise, no fear, and no remorse.
Ethan’s blood ran colder than the cellar floor.
"Doctor Vance?" Ethan whispered, his brain struggling to process the visual reality before him. "Dr. Vance?"
The man standing before him was Dr. Julian Vance—his father’s chief personal physician, the head of the Vance Medical Research Foundation, and the very man who had signed Olivia’s death certificate nine years ago. He was also the father of his own driver, Vance, who was currently standing right beside Ethan holding a gun.
Ethan spun his head toward his driver. "Vance? What is this?!"
The driver didn't move his gun toward the old man. Instead, Vance slowly lowered his weapon, stepped two paces backward, and took up a defensive position beside his father at the base of the stairs.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole," the younger Vance said, his voice completely flat, devoid of the warmth he had shown in the car. "Family comes first."
The old doctor chuckled—a dry, rattling sound that filled the subterranean space. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his cold eyes sweeping over Ethan’s trembling frame with clinical detachment.
"You always were too sentimental for your own good, Ethan," Dr. Julian Vance said smoothly, tapping his mahogany cane once against the stone floor. "Just like your father. Old Edward Cole lacked the vision to see what we were building here."
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Ethan drawn the pistol, aiming the black iron barrel directly at the old doctor’s chest. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't blow your head off right now."
"Because if my heart stops, Ethan," Dr. Vance said, raising his silver-topped cane to point at the IV bottle hanging above Olivia’s head, "the automated timer on that drip pump will dump fifty milligrams of potassium chloride directly into your sweet Olivia’s femoral line in less than sixty seconds. She’ll be dead before you can even figure out how to stop the machine."
