Chapter 6 - THE RUSTED LANTERN
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my veins.
I clutched the leather journal to my chest, crawling backward away from the harsh glare of the headlights pouring through the slatted walls of the boathouse. Leo, startled by the sudden noise and light, let out a soft, fussy whimper. Celeste immediately rocked him, hushing him with gentle whispers.
"How did he find us?" I gasped, my heart hammering wildly.
Celeste peered through a gap in the rotting wood. "He didn't track us. He tracked the evidence. Once he realized the key was missing from his pocket, he knew exactly where you’d go."
Outside, the heavy crunch of tactical boots on gravel signaled their approach.
"I have the psychiatric hold papers signed by a judge, Mara!" Daniel yelled through the megaphone, his tone mockingly sympathetic. "You’re unwell! You abducted a newborn! Come out now, and I promise the facility will treat you with the utmost care!"
"He’s not going to put you in a facility," Celeste said grimly, handing Leo back to me. She picked up the rusted crowbar. "He’s going to drown you in this lake and tell the cops you jumped in a manic episode."
I looked around the boathouse. It was a single, massive room built directly over the water. There were no back doors. The only exit was the front, where Daniel and his men were waiting with weapons.
My eyes darted across the shadows until they landed on a heavy, rusted iron lantern hanging from a thick chain attached to the main support beam overhead.
Then, a memory surfaced.
When I was eight years old, my father used to tell me bedtime stories about his childhood. He grew up on this very lake, long before Victor stole the property. He told me about a secret smugglers' tunnel built during Prohibition, an underwater inlet that connected the old boathouse directly to the drainage system of the city's aqueduct.
The floorboards aren't just a floor, Mara, my father had said. They’re a lid.
"Celeste," I whispered urgently, pointing to the rusted lantern. "Pull that chain. With all your weight."
Celeste didn't question me. She dropped the crowbar, leaped up, grabbed the heavy iron chain supporting the lantern, and pulled down with everything she had.
With a deafening groan of ancient gears and rusted pulleys, the center section of the wooden dock we were sitting on suddenly shifted. It didn't break; it dropped cleanly down on a hydraulic hinge, plunging into the black water below and creating a wide, open square in the floor.
Bobbing gently in the water beneath us was a small, motorized inflatable raft. My father must have kept it maintained years ago, or perhaps Victor had kept it as his own emergency escape route.
"Get in," I urged, securing the journal inside Eleanor’s trench coat and holding Leo tightly.
Celeste scrambled down the wooden ladder into the raft, then reached up to help me down. The pain in my stomach screamed as I lowered myself, but the adrenaline masked the worst of it.
Just as Celeste hit the ignition button on the silent electric motor, the front doors of the boathouse were kicked open.
"Check the corners!" Daniel’s voice barked.
Celeste steered the raft directly into the dark, narrow tunnel hidden beneath the back wall of the boathouse. The concrete aqueduct swallowed us whole, plunging us into total darkness just as flashlight beams swept over the water where we had been seconds before.
"They’re gone!" a man shouted echoing down the tunnel.
"Find them!" Daniel screamed, the sound of his rage echoing off the concrete walls.
We glided silently through the pitch-black tunnel for what felt like hours, though it was likely only ten minutes. The damp cold seeped into my bones, but Leo was warm against my chest, completely asleep.
"I was supposed to kill you," Celeste whispered suddenly into the darkness.
I stiffened, gripping the child tighter.
"When Daniel hired me," she continued, her voice echoing softly over the rushing water, "he didn't just want me to push you to a breakdown. He offered me five million to slip a tasteless, untraceable cardiac arrest drug into your tea during the third trimester. He gave me the vial on my first day."
A shudder ran violently down my spine.
"Why didn't you?" I asked.
"Because I watched you," Celeste said. "I watched how kindly you treated the staff. I watched you cry over the baby clothes in the nursery. And then I found my brother's case files hidden in Daniel’s office. I realized they killed him. I poured the vial down the sink that same night."
The aqueduct tunnel finally began to lighten. We drifted out of a massive iron grate, emerging into a quiet, industrial canal on the opposite side of the lake, miles from the Ashford estate.
The rain had stopped. A single streetlamp illuminated a concrete landing pad.
Standing on the pad, smoking a cigarette, was FBI Agent Harris.
A wave of profound relief washed over me. "Harris!" I called out weakly. "Thank God."
Celeste steered the raft to the edge, and Harris reached down, offering his hand to help me up. I took it, stepping onto the solid concrete, my legs shaking uncontrollably.
"We have the proof," I said breathlessly, reaching into my coat to pull out the leather journal. "It’s all here. Everything Victor and Daniel did."
Harris looked at the journal. He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled the smoke slowly, and flicked the butt into the canal.
May you like
Then, he reached into his jacket, pulled out his federal issue Glock, and pointed it directly at my chest.
"I know you have the proof, Mara," Harris said, his voice entirely devoid of the sympathy he had shown at the estate. "Daniel called me ten minutes ago. He pays much, much better than the government."
