Chapter 8 - THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF
"How could Marcus have Leo's wooden horse?" I asked as police cruisers flooded the narrow South Philadelphia street with flashing red and blue lights.
Two paramedics were already wrapping sterile gauze around Roman's burned shoulder on the back bumper of an ambulance, while uniformed officers hauled a screaming, handcuffed Cassandra into the back of a patrol car. My father was sitting safely in a second ambulance, getting his blood pressure checked by a real paramedic who had already bagged the toxic blue pills as federal evidence.
Roman stared at the glowing screen of Cassandra's burner phone, his jaw tight.
"Leo dropped the horse on the terrace lawn when the carriage house exploded," Roman said, standing up and pulling a fresh black wool sweater over his bandaged shoulder despite the paramedic's protests. "Marcus must have grabbed it before he fled into the woods. But why would he care about a broken wooden toy after we already found the letter inside?"
I thought back to the ballroom. To the moment Marcus's polished shoe came down on the little wooden horse.
CRACK.
One leg had snapped off, revealing the hollow cavity where Clara had hidden the blue-ink note.
"Wait," I said, grabbing Roman's good arm. "In the ballroom, Vincent told us he carved that hollow space to hide your mother's wedding ring for Leo when he grew up. When we found the letter inside, we assumed Clara took the ring out to make room for the paper."
Roman's dark eyes narrowed. "Clara never had our mother's ring. She told me in the panic room before we left that she slid the folded note through a crack in the wood under the saddle."
"Then the ring is still inside the wood," I realized, my breath catching. "Not in the belly. In the base of the neck."
Roman didn't wait for the police captain to finish taking his statement. Within ten minutes, we were back in the sixty-eight Mustang, flying east toward the Jersey coast as the sky turned the color of bruised plums before dawn.
I called the estate's emergency satellite phone from the cruiser radio the state troopers lent us. Vincent answered from inside the reinforced panic room.
"Leo, Clara, and I are locked in with four state troopers outside the door, Roman," Vincent's voice crackled over the speaker. "Don't go to the vineyard cliff. Whatever Marcus thinks is in that wooden horse isn't worth your life."
"Vinny," Roman said into the handset while I navigated the winding coastal road at seventy miles an hour. "What did you put inside the neck of that horse before Marcus pushed you three years ago?"
There was a long, heavy pause on the radio.
"It wasn't Mother's ring, Roman," Vincent said quietly. "Three years ago, when I found out Arthur and the Vane family were using our vineyard docks for trafficking, I also found out who on the Philadelphia federal bench was protecting them. I put a micro-SD card inside the neck of Leo's horse and glued the mane over the seam. It has forty hours of wiretaps recorded in Arthur's study. If Marcus destroys that card, half the syndicate walks free, and they'll never stop hunting Leo."
We pulled through the stone gates of the coastal vineyard just as the first streak of blood-red sunlight broke over the Atlantic Ocean.
The rows of autumn grapevines were bare and twisted in the salt wind. At the far edge of the rocky bluff—where the stone wall dropped eighty feet straight down into the crashing white surf—stood Marcus Vane.
His tuxedo was torn and caked in dried mud. The heavy gold ring with the scratched family crest glinted on his pinky finger as he held a canister of camp fuel in one hand and Leo's three-legged wooden horse right over the edge of the cliff in the other.
Roman and I stepped out of the Mustang thirty feet back from the rocks. The roar of the ocean below nearly drowned out the wind.
"Right on time, Roman!" Marcus shouted, his voice raw and manic. His eyes darted wildly toward me. "You brought the nanny? How touching!"
"Let the toy go, Marcus," Roman called out, walking slowly forward with his empty hands visible at his sides. "Cassandra is in federal custody. Arthur is in a hospital bed handcuffed to the rail. It's over."
"Nothing is over as long as I have the drive inside this piece of firewood!" Marcus laughed hysterically, shaking the wooden horse over the eighty-foot drop. "Arthur told me five minutes before the cellar blew that Vincent hid the wiretaps inside the kid's toy! You let me walk down to the cove where my boat is waiting, Roman, or I drop this into the Atlantic and pull my gun on both of you!"
From fifty yards behind the grapevines, I knew the state police sharpshooters hadn't arrived yet—we had outrun them by ten minutes on the coastal highway.
And I saw the black grip of a nine-millimeter pistol tucked into Marcus's waistband.
"Give me the horse, and the keys to the Mustang are yours," Roman said, taking another step closer.
"Stay back!" Marcus yanked the pistol from his waistband with his left hand, aiming it squarely at Roman's chest while holding the wooden horse over the abyss with his right. "You think I'm stupid? The moment you have the card, I'm a dead man! Actually... why wait?"
Marcus's finger tightened on the trigger.
Roman was twenty feet away on open rock with a burned shoulder and no cover.
I didn't have a gun. I didn't even have the tire wrench anymore.
All I had in my coat pocket was the heavy brass safety compass Clara had dropped in the pantry—the one with the cracked glass face.
"Hey, Marcus!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, stepping sideways toward the cliff edge. "Look what your sister gave the feds!"
I whipped my arm back and hurled the heavy brass compass with everything I had—not at Marcus, but right past his head toward the open cliff edge, making it look in the dim dawn light like I was throwing a cell phone or a badge into his reach.
Instinctively, Marcus's greedy eyes tracked the flashing metal object. He flinched sideways for half a second, his gun barrel wavering two inches off Roman's chest.
Half a second was all Roman Moretti needed.
Roman covered the remaining fifteen feet like a striking wolf. He dove forward, knocking Marcus's gun hand skyward just as the pistol discharged harmlessly into the gray clouds.
The two men slammed into the low stone parapet at the cliff's edge.
The wooden horse flew out of Marcus's hand.
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I lunged across the wet rocks, scraping my knees raw against the granite, and caught the carved wooden tail of the horse with my fingertips two inches before it slid over the eighty-foot drop.
Beside me, Marcus swung a vicious fist directly into Roman's burned shoulder. Roman let out a guttural cry of pain, his knees buckling on the slick moss as Marcus grabbed him by the throat and shoved him backward over the crumbling stone wall toward the jagged rocks below.
