Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Brooks had gone to get Sullivan. By now they’d be assembling a team, gathering equipment, preparing to enter these tunnels. She needed to find them before they walked into danger they couldn’t see coming.
Her boots splashed through water that had been ankle-deep during the rescue. Now it reached mid-calf. The storm surge was accelerating faster than even she’d predicted. She needed to move quickly.
The compass warmed in her pocket, its needle spinning even without being visible. Emmeline had always said the instrument responded not just to magnetic north but to intention. Right now, Vivienne’s intention burned clear—find Brooks before the Aldriches did.
She paused at a junction where three passages converged. The left route led back toward the observation grate and the chamber where Melissa had been held. Straight ahead descended deeper into the network, toward the central hub where the Aldriches stored their contraband. The right passage climbed, eventually emerging near the lighthouse foundation.
Voices echoed from the left passage—Brooks’s voice, controlled but urgent. Sullivan answering. They’d reached the empty chamber and discovered Melissa was gone. Relief flooded through her. They were alive. They were together. They hadn’t been ambushed yet.
But as she started toward them, a different sound froze her in place. Footsteps, multiple sets, coming from the central passage. Not the measured tread of law enforcement but something quicker, more desperate. Men moving through their territory with the confidence of those who’d walked these routes for generations.
The two groups were about to intersect.
Vivienne pressed herself against the wall, weighing her options. She could call out, warn Brooks. But that would alert whoever was coming to her presence and possibly trigger a confrontation in these narrow passages where stray bullets would ricochet off stone. She could try to intercept them herself. Or she could find another route and try to reach Brooks first.
The footsteps grew louder. She caught fragments of conversation—Gerald Aldrich’s voice, rough and impatient, giving orders. They were evacuating. Taking what they could carry and destroying the rest.
They hadn’t mentioned Melissa. Either they didn’t know she’d escaped, or they’d already written her off as a lost cause. Either way, they were focused on salvaging their operation, not on pursuing a single prisoner through flooding tunnels.
But Brooks and Sullivan were directly in their path.
Vivienne made her decision. She moved quickly back to the right passage, the one that climbed. Her grandmother’s maps had shown a narrow side route here, barely more than a crawl space, that connected to the chamber where she’d last heard Brooks’s voice. If she could reach them first, she could warn them. Get them to fall back or find cover.
The passage forced her to her hands and knees. Water flowed past her, running downhill with increasing force. Her dress snagged on rough stone. The pendant at her throat swung forward, its lighthouse stone seeming to glow in the darkness though that had to be her imagination.
Behind her, the voices converged. A shout. The sound of weapons being drawn. Sullivan’s voice: “Drop your weapons! Police!”
She crawled faster. The passage opened into a wider corridor and she stumbled to her feet, running now despite the water trying to sweep her legs out from under her. This was the observation route that would connect back to the main passages.
Flashlight beams cut through the darkness ahead. She skidded to a stop as two figures emerged from a side passage. Gerald Aldrich and another man—Jeremy, she thought, one of the younger generation. Both armed. Both looking desperate.
They’d split up. The voices she’d heard were just some of them. Gerald had taken a different route, one that brought him here, to this junction, at exactly the wrong moment.
“Ms. Hawthorne.” Gerald’s voice carried none of his son’s polish. Just cold brutality. “Convenient. You’re going to tell us where you’ve hidden our property.”
She backed against the wall. The water was waist-deep here, the current strong enough that she had to brace herself to stay upright. Behind Gerald and Jeremy, the passage led deeper into the network. Behind her lay the route to Brooks, but she’d never make it past them.
“Melissa Clarkson is beyond your reach,” she said. “So is the evidence. Your operation is finished.”
“Not yet.” Gerald raised his weapon. “You’re going to take us to both. Starting with the Clarkson woman.”
Jeremy shifted, uncomfortable. He was younger, less hardened than his grandfather. “Maybe we should just go. Cut our losses and—”
“Shut up.” Gerald didn’t take his eyes off Vivienne. “We’ve dealt with Hawthorne women before. You’re not as special as you think.”
“Grandmother caused you problems,” Vivienne said, keeping her voice steady. “Mother asked too many questions. You made them disappear. But you never learned that some things can’t be killed.”
“Everything can be killed.” Gerald’s weapon didn’t waver. “We’ve proven that often enough.”
But Vivienne had learned something from her grandmother that the Aldriches never understood. Death wasn’t an ending. It was a transformation. And right now, she could feel every soul they’d destroyed pressing close, waiting for justice.