Chapter 4 - The Vault and the Serpent
The silence in the subterranean vault was broken only by the hum of the cooling fans and the rhythmic beep of the transferring drive.
"You're lying," I said, though every instinct, every piece of evidence, every memory of Vanessa’s coldness over the last few months told me Croft was speaking the absolute, unvarnished truth.
"Check her offshore accounts, Mercer," Croft said, nodding toward his laptop. "Account registered under 'St. Claire Holdings' in the Caymans. She’s already taken an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar advance from the buyers in Macau. Why do you think she threw that party tonight? She needed fifty witnesses to testify that she was upstairs drinking champagne when the 'faulty heating system' in the back wing failed completely."
The monstrous calculation of it took my breath away.
She hadn't just neglected my daughters. She had staged their slow, agonizing deaths to look like an accidental utility failure while she established an airtight alibi surrounded by fifty prominent citizens.
"Hands behind your head, Croft," Liam commanded, stepping forward, his weapon leveled at Croft’s forehead. "Now. Down on your knees."
Croft’s smirk didn't waver. "You really should check your perimeter telemetry, Captain."
Before Liam could react, a deafening explosion shattered the quiet night above us. The concrete ceiling shuddered, raining dust and pulverized plaster onto our heads. The emergency lights in the vault flared violently, then died, plunging the room into absolute darkness.
In the pitch black, I heard the sharp rustle of fabric, the impact of flesh against flesh, and the metallic clatter of Liam’s weapon skittering across the slate floor.
"Liam!" I shouted, dropping low.
A muzzle flash strobed in the dark, illuminating Croft lunging toward the secondary emergency exit that led into the underground wine tunnel. Liam rolled across the floor, groaning as he pushed himself up, but Croft was already through the heavy fire door, slamming the magnetic seal behind him.
"He triggered an explosive breach at the boathouse!" Liam coughed, coughing through the dust as he scrambled to his feet, retrieving his sidearm. "It was a diversion to cut the main security grid! He’s heading for the shoreline tunnel!"
"The tunnel comes out beneath the private dock," I said, my adrenaline surging with lethal clarity. "There's an enclosed speedboat moored inside the covered slip."
"Vance is covering the upper grounds," Liam said, working the manual override lever on the sealed door. "We take the tunnel. We trap him before he hits open water."
The steel door gave way with a loud hiss of hydraulic pressure.
We sprinted through the damp, arched stone corridors of the wine tunnel. Ahead of us, the beam of Croft’s tactical flashlight bounced frantically against the limestone walls. He was carrying a hard-shell Pelican case containing the cloned server drives.
As we neared the end of the tunnel, the bitter smell of pine and the freezing air of Lake Tahoe hit us. The tunnel opened into the boathouse—a two-story cedar structure built over the water, where my custom thirty-foot wooden Riva runabout bobbed in the dark slip.
Croft was on the dock, tossing the Pelican case into the passenger seat of the boat. He reached for the ignition switch.
"Croft!" I roared.
He spun around, drawing a compact semi-automatic pistol from his jacket. But before he could align his sights, Liam fired two controlled rounds.
The first shot shattered the fiberglass console of the Riva; the second caught Croft high in the right shoulder.
Croft cried out, stumbling backward against the gunwale of the boat, dropping his weapon into the freezing, black water of the slip with a heavy splash. He collapsed onto the wooden planks, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his breath coming in ragged, steaming gasps.
I walked up to him, my heavy boots thudding against the wet dock.
Croft looked up at me through gritted teeth, blood pooling beneath his fingers. "Go ahead, billionaire. Be the hero. Pull the trigger."
I looked down at the man who had walked through my home while my children cried for their mother. I looked at the stolen hard drives sitting on the seat of the boat.
"Dying here is too easy for you," I said coldly.
I kicked the Pelican case off the boat and pulled the master emergency cutoff cord for the dock's hydraulic lift, dropping the steel security gate with a thunderous crash, completely sealing the boathouse off from the open lake.
Behind us, heavy footsteps pounded down the wooden ramp. Detective Vance and three armed deputies entered the boathouse, their flashlights pinning Croft against the wall in blinding white light.
"Suspect secured!" Vance shouted, moving in quickly to zip-tie Croft’s wrists and apply a field pressure dressing to his shoulder.
Vance looked up at me, his weathered face grim. "We just intercepted Vanessa at the front gates. She was trying to leave in her Mercedes with three packed Louis Vuitton trunks and two passports."
"Did she get off the property?" I demanded.
"Not a chance," Vance said. "Hannah and Maria arrived at the gates the same second Vanessa tried to force her way past the perimeter guards. Hannah blocked the driveway with her station wagon. Vanessa’s in the back of my patrol cruiser right now."
I closed my eyes for a single second, letting out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in my lungs for six months.
"Liam," I said quietly. "Take the drives. Secure the office."
"Already on it, Alex," Liam replied.
May you like
I turned my back on Julian Croft and the flashing red-and-blue lights reflecting across the dark waters of Lake Tahoe. I walked out of the boathouse and headed back up the stone path toward the main house, where the only four things in the world that mattered were waiting for me.
***
