Chapter 67 - The Convergence at Dead Man's Point
The flare struck the gasoline-soaked cedar piles with a sound like a thunderclap.
A twenty-foot wall of brilliant white-hot magnesium fire erupted through the rotted floorboards of the quarantine shed. The blast blew the corrugated tin roof fifty feet into the air, raining down sheets of twisted, burning metal across the pier.
The two mercenaries inside the shed were thrown outward, engulfed in flame, screaming as they tumbled off the pier into the freezing black mud of the low tide.
The shockwave knocked Arthur off his feet, his ebony cane skittering across the burning timbers.
Hannah fell to her knees, screaming, her hands clutched over her ears as the fuel bladder beneath the foundation cooked off in a secondary, deafening fireball that illuminated the entire cove in searing orange daylight.
"Go! Move!" I hissed at Julian, hauling him up by his belt, half-carrying, half-dragging him the final thirty yards over the crest of the ridge to the concrete bunker.
Behind us, the remaining mercenaries on the pier were firing blind into the brush, their suppressed weapons spitting rhythmic, deadly bursts that shredded the pine trees around our heads. A bullet took a chunk of concrete out of the bunker’s embrasure, showering my cheek with stinging grey dust.
I shoved Julian through the narrow iron doorway of the bunker, slamming the heavy, rusted blast door shut behind us, dropping the massive iron locking bar into place with a hollow, echoing *CLANG*.
We were safe from small arms fire, but we were cornered.
The bunker was ten feet square, damp, freezing, and had only one exit: the blast door we had just barred. The narrow slit facing the ocean looked out over a hundred-foot sheer granite cliff dropping straight down into the boiling surf of Dead Man’s Point.
Julian slumped against the cold concrete wall, his eyes rolling back, his skin clammy and grey. "Clara... you should have... taken the skiff..."
"Shut up," I said, leaning my back against the iron door, my chest heaving, the heavy ledger clutched in my arms. "Nobody leaves anybody behind anymore. That's the Vance family rule, and I'm not a Vance anymore."
Outside, heavy combat boots crunched over the gravel.
A heavy, deliberate strike vibrated through the iron door.
*Clang. Clang. Clang.*
The head of an ebony cane.
"Clara," Arthur's voice came through the rusted iron plate, perfectly steady, perfectly polite, despite the raging fire down at the pier. "A commendable distraction. Truly. You have your grandfather’s appetite for violence. But this bunker was built in 1942 to withstand naval bombardments. You cannot dig your way out. And you have five minutes before my cutter's heavy crane lifts this entire shelter off its footings."
I didn't answer.
"Let Julian out," Arthur continued, his tone conversational. "He is an employee. He was a decent boy before he developed this ridiculous infatuation with you. I will have my medic treat his shoulder. And you and I can settle our accounts like civilized people."
"Like you settled them with Dad?" I shouted through the steel slit. "You bled him dry, Arthur! You let him turn into a shaking, terrified drunk because he couldn't face the debts you pinned on him!"
A low, dry chuckle drifted through the iron.
"Your father was a coward, Clara. He took the money when the times were fat, and when the bill came due, he put you in the path of the train. Don't blame me for the architecture of your house. I only built the foundation; your father furnished it with your bones."
Beside the door, Hannah’s voice rose, shrill and frantic: *"Clara! Please! He's going to kill me! Clara, open the door! Let me in!"*
"Hannah," Arthur said, and the cold finality in his voice was chilling, "kneel down."
"Grandfather, please—"
"Kneel down, girl."
Through the observation slit, I saw Arthur’s hand raise a sleek, black semi-automatic pistol, aiming it directly at the back of Hannah's head as she knelt in the wet gravel, sobbing into the dirt.
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"You have five seconds, Clara," Arthur said, without looking away from Hannah. "Open the door with the ledger, or your sister's brains will be the next thing you scrub off the floor."
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