I caught myself against the railing from falling, as my heart thundered away inside of me. My hands shook, as they supported me on the wooden railing of the porch, as grief swept through me.
"No!" My hands clenched into fists. Deshavi might yet still be alive. I owed her enough to find out.
A voice whispered, "You're too old."
"That may well be, but you're going to pay to find that out!" I gritted out in denunciation of the disparaging spirit that was assailing me in my moment of despair and grief.
I turned back toward the house. The sudden resolve that I felt course through me helped to still the fluttering of my heart. Now was no time to be weak or old. It was a time to be strong and I willed my body to be so accordingly.
Strength returned to my fingers and with the rising fury that I felt at the near hopelessness of my situation I grabbed an ax from off the hearth that I used for chopping kindling. I jerked an ornately woven area rug away from the middle of the living room floor and lifting the axe high with two hands I brought it crashing down towards the polished wood plank floor.
The axe's blade bit deeply into the wood and I worked away savagely at the floor. Chunks of wood splintered off to the side, as the floor grudgingly gave way to the sharpened steel and the trauma wrecked by the axe.
I had hoped that this day would never come again, but trouble had a way of finding me. The way made clear I lifted the heavy case out from beneath the floor. I undid the locks and the case opened. There was money in several currencies. Several passports, but they were all hopelessly outdated now. I'd have to get them redone if I needed them. The top side of the case held a collection of odd looking knives, two 40 caliber automatic pistols, and a small derringer. There were also a couple of grenades.
I looked at the evidence of the bloody and brutal past laid out before me. It was time to be Agent Shalako once again. I had sworn to the death of the agent character from ever rising again. Once my agent status had cost me the life of my son, now I only hoped that it could save the life of my granddaughter. That is, if there was still a life to be saved.
The evening sounds were in full rigor of effort this evening, mused Chantry to himself, as he sipped from his wine glass. He always came to visit his Virginia estate in the early autumn. This was his favorite time of the day to just enjoy the peace of the countryside. There was not a single sound amiss in the nightly array of insect chirping, but suddenly Chantry felt himself on the edge, at the presence of some unknown danger.