Chapter 95: The Roof Opens
A deep, shuddering tremor vibrated through the granite pavers beneath thirty five pairs of boots, cutting through the howling blizzard with the heavy resonance of shifting tectonic plates. The men standing in the western alcove froze in their tracks, their breaths catching in their throats as the low vibration traveled upward through their leg bones into their hips. It was not the hollow rattle of wind against loose tin or the snapping of cedar branches in the gale.
The sound carried the unmistakable weight of industrial machinery, a heavy mechanical grinding of geared pinions driving massive counterweights along greased steel tracks.
Torin Sterling stopped with his shotgun butt poised three inches above the snow crust, his jaw slackening as the vibration ratt
