Chapter 8 - JUSTICE ON THE CLIFFS
"Drop the weapon, Marcus!" Detective Miller shouted, drawing his sidearm from behind a stone pillar.
Marcus didn't drop the gun. Instead, he lunged backward out of the doorway, slamming the secondary iron corridor gate shut with a deafening CLANG, locking the officers and Arthur inside the cellar wing.
"He's heading for the upper cliffs!" Miller barked, firing two shots at the iron gate lock, but the heavy deadbolt held firm. "Find an exit! NOW!"
Arthur looked at Julian, who was desperately trying to shield his feverish daughter on the cot. "Julian! Is there another way out of these cellars?"
"The old lighthouse stairs!" Julian rasped, pointing toward a hidden arched opening behind the dusty piano. "It leads straight up to the top lantern room! But there’s a drop to the ocean rocks!"
"Miller! Get Clara out through the main breach!" Arthur shouted to the officers. "I'm going after Marcus!"
Arthur squeezed through the narrow archway behind the piano, charging up a winding, tight stone spiral staircase. The damp air grew colder and the roar of the wind grew louder as he climbed higher and higher into the lighthouse tower.
He burst through the trapdoor at the top of the tower into the open air of the lantern room.
The glass dome of the old lighthouse had been shattered by decades of storms. The freezing ocean wind and rain whipped through the high tower.
Marcus Kane stood near the edge of the broken iron balcony, clutching a briefcase containing forged trust documents and stolen bearer bonds, his gun aimed directly at the trapdoor.
"Get back!" Marcus screamed over the roaring wind. "I built an empire with that trust money! I am not going to prison for a washed-up composer and his bastard kid!"
"It's over, Marcus!" Arthur said, stepping onto the wet iron floor, his hands held up calmly. "The police have the compound surrounded. The entire city of Seattle knows what you did. A six-year-old girl destroyed your entire empire with twelve notes of music!"
Marcus’s eyes darted frantically toward the dark ocean surging two hundred feet below the cliff balcony. "She... she couldn't have... she was just a child..."
"She was Julian Vance's blood," Arthur said, taking a slow, steady step forward. "Music doesn't die, Marcus. You can lock a man in a basement for twelve years, but you cannot lock away the truth."
Marcus raised his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Then you can go join him in the dark!"
BANG!
A shot echoed through the night air—but it didn't come from Marcus’s gun.
A tactical sniper unit stationed on the lower cliff ridge fired through the shattered lantern glass. The high-caliber round struck Marcus’s shoulder.
Marcus gasped, dropping his handgun. The impact threw him backward against the rusted balcony railing. The old iron gave way with a sharp screech of snapping metal.
Marcus screamed as he fell backward off the cliff tower, disappearing into the dark, swirling void of the ocean waves below.
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Arthur rushed to the balcony edge, looking down into the foaming white water. There was nothing left to see. The ocean had claimed the man who had brought twelve years of darkness to an innocent family.
Arthur turned away from the edge, took a deep breath of the cold sea air, and descended the stairs to bring Julian Vance back into the light.
