Chapter 3 - THE SUBTERRANEAN ESCAPE
"Touch her," Grant rasped, his voice thick with blood and smoke, "and I’ll tear your throat out with my teeth."
Sterling did not look angry. He looked mildly amused, as if a minor insect had buzzed near his ear.
"You are in no position to negotiate, Grant," Sterling said smoothly, gesturing to his operators. "Your estate is surrounded. Your security team is dead or fleeing. And your father’s little secret is about to become my private asset."
The operator holding the stuffed rabbit drew a tactical knife, sliced open the seams along the rabbit's back, and pulled out a second wax-paper package that had been hidden deep within the foam core.
Inside was not a micro-SD card.
It was a small, heavy silver key with an intricate, five-sided head—the physical master key to the vault at the Port Newark dry docks.
Sterling took the key, holding it up to the ambient light of the burning library, his gray eyes shining with an oily satisfaction.
"Margaret was indeed a clever woman," Sterling murmured. "She split the access requirements. The key in the rabbit. The magnetic code in the locket. And the digital location data on the card you recovered earlier."
He looked down at Grant again.
"Which means I no longer require your cooperation. Or yours, little girl."
Sterling raised his hand, signaling the operator holding the assault rifle to execute them both.
At that precise moment, a violent burst of automatic fire erupted from the dark opening of the secret stairwell.
TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!
The operator holding the tactical knife took three heavy 9mm rounds directly through his throat, collapsing backward into the fireplace. The second operator spun around, his weapon firing wildly into the ceiling before he too was driven down by a hail of gunfire.
Vance emerged from the dark tunnel entrance like a demon rising from the underworld.
He was covered in soot, blood streaming from a wound on his forehead, holding a heavy submachine gun in his left hand and a tactical grenade in his right.
"Grant! Get down!" Vance screamed.
Vance pulled the pin on the grenade with his teeth and threw it directly into the central hallway outside the library, where three more operators were advancing.
Grant didn't waste a split second.
He grabbed Ellie, hauled her over his shoulder, and lunged headfirst into the open bookshelf passage, rolling down the first four stone steps as the grenade detonated in the corridor behind them.
BOOM!
The force of the explosion collapsed the heavy masonry archway above the library entrance, bringing tons of stone, wood, and burning plaster crashing down, completely sealing the secret opening behind them in a wall of impenetrable rubble.
Darkness slammed over them like a heavy iron door.
The only light came from the narrow beam of a tactical flashlight mounted to Vance’s chest harness as he scrambled down the stairs behind them, coughing heavily through the thick dust.
"Is the girl hit?!" Vance demanded, his voice echoing in the narrow, circular stone stairwell.
Grant sat up on the cold stone floor, pulling Ellie into his lap, scanning her small body with his hands in the dark.
"Ellie! Are you hurt? Talk to me!"
Ellie was shaking violently, her hands clutching Grant’s suit lapels, but she shook her head. "No... I'm okay. But Mr. Patch..."
Grant looked up at Vance. "Where is Patch?"
Vance lowered his head, his face shadowed by the flashlight beam. "He didn't make it down the stairs, Grant. He covered my back while I cleared the operators at the bottom. He’s gone."
Grant closed his eyes for two long seconds, letting the grief for the old steward burn away into a cold, diamond-hard rage.
He stood up, lifting Ellie onto his hip.
"The tunnel leads two miles east to the boat house on the river," Grant said, his voice dropping into a flat, lethal register. "Is the speedboat ready?"
"It’s fueled and prepped," Vance said, slapping a fresh magazine into his submachine gun and handing a secondary weapon—a compact Glock 19—to Grant. "We have about ten minutes before Sterling’s team realizes we didn't die in that cave-in and sends rearside units to cut us off at the riverbank."
"They won't cut us off," Grant said, taking the Glock and checking the chamber. "Because we aren't running away."
Vance stopped, staring at Grant in the dim flashlight beam. "What are you talking about? They have a full strike team up there! We need to get the kid to a safehouse in Manhattan!"
"Sterling has the key from the rabbit," Grant said, his eyes burning with a dark, terrifying intensity. "He thinks he has everything. But he forgot one thing."
Grant reached into his pocket and pulled out the tiny, wax-wrapped micro-SD card that Margaret had hidden in the floppy ear—the one he had recovered before the raid began.
"He has the physical key," Grant whispered. "He has the locket. But without the encrypted access codes on this card, opening that vault in Port Newark will trigger three tons of commercial explosives buried under the concrete foundation."
Grant looked down the dark, dripping stone tunnel stretching into the earth.
"He isn't going to Port Newark to get his treasure," Grant said. "He’s going there to die. And I'm going to make sure I'm there to watch it."
They began moving down the tunnel at a rapid pace, their footsteps echoing against the damp, moss-covered brickwork.
Ellie laid her head against Grant’s neck, her small arm wrapped tightly around his throat.
"Mr. Grant?" she whispered softly in the dark.
"I'm here, sweetheart."
"Is Mommy's necklace going to come back?"
May you like
Grant reached up, touching her small back, his grip on his weapon tightening until his knuckles turned white.
"Yes, Ellie," Grant promised her, his voice cutting through the damp darkness of the subterranean world. "I am going to bring your mommy’s necklace back. And I am going to make the man who took it pay for every single thing he did."
