Chapter 4 - The Panic Room
The next morning, the mansion felt like a tomb.
Adrian had left before sunrise in a convoy of black SUVs.
I was left alone with the four boys and a skeleton crew of security guards.
At ten in the morning, the boys were sitting in the living room playing video games.
I was in the kitchen, making sandwiches, when the main security alarm went off.
It wasn't a fire alarm.
It was a high-pitched, deafening siren that flashed red lights from every ceiling corner.
"Code Red!" a security guard screamed, sprinting past the kitchen window with a rifle in his hands.
"Perimeter breach!"
Panic exploded in my chest.
I dropped the knife and sprinted into the living room.
The boys were frozen, terrified.
"Come on!" I shouted, grabbing Luke and Noah by their hands.
"Evan, Caleb, move!"
"Where?" Evan yelled over the blaring siren.
"My dad's study!"
Adrian had shown me the panic room hidden behind the bookshelves during my brief orientation.
We ran down the hallway.
I could hear heavy boots kicking at the front doors.
Someone was trying to get in, and they were heavily armed.
We burst into the study, and I slammed the heavy oak door shut, locking it.
I rushed to the bookshelf, pulled the specific leather-bound book Adrian had mentioned, and pushed.
The wall clicked and swung open, revealing a steel-reinforced room.
"Get in!" I ordered the boys.
They scrambled into the dark, windowless space.
I followed them, pulling the heavy steel door shut just as the study door exploded inward from a shotgun blast.
The panic room plunged into darkness.
The boys were crying, huddled together in the corner.
I turned on my phone's flashlight, casting a dim glow over their terrified faces.
"Listen to me," I whispered, sitting on the floor in front of them.
"We are safe in here."
"Nobody can get through that door."
Luke buried his face into my chest, sobbing uncontrollably.
I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight.
Evan, the tough, angry eleven-year-old, looked at me with tears streaming down his face.
"Are they going to kill us?" Evan asked, his voice breaking.
"No," I promised fiercely.
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"I won't let them."
For the next two hours, we sat in the dark, listening to the muffled sounds of gunfire above us.
