Chapter 14 - The Cost of a Secret
In darkness, every sound grew huge: waves knocking against concrete, Tobias's breath, boots scraping overhead.
Rosalind felt along the tunnel wall until her fingers found a wheel valve. She turned it. A gate opened somewhere below, sending a rush of cold seawater through a drainage channel.
“Now,” Tobias said.
They slid into the channel, half crawling, half swimming, and came out beneath the sea wall as the tide surged around them. Tobias was limping. A bullet had grazed his thigh.
Rosalind tore a strip from her shirt to bind the wound. “You don't get to die on me. Not after finally standing up.”
He winced. “Wasn't planning to.”
They reached a fishing skiff tied to a piling. Its owner, a woman with silver hair and a cigarette tucked behind one ear, looked at their muddy faces and asked no questions. She ferried them across the harbor for a hundred dollars.
On the opposite shore, Sam Ortega met them in a boatyard. He plugged the flash drive into an isolated laptop and whistled.
“Bank records. GPS logs. Security footage. This isn't just fraud.”
A grainy video showed drums being unloaded at midnight, their hazard labels covered by fresh paint. Another clip showed Tobias's wrecked car being hauled into a private garage years ago. Garrett stood beside it.
Rosalind's stomach tightened. “He was there.”
“Looks that way,” Sam said.
Tobias stared at the screen. “He wasn't the one who cut the brakes. I saw the man under my car.”
“Who?” Rosalind asked.
Tobias didn't answer until the video froze on a figure moving through the garage, the same signet ring visible on his hand.
“Daniel Mercer,” he said. “Penelope's husband.”
Sam clicked to the next file. It contained a death certificate for Daniel dated ten years earlier.
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Attached was a recently recorded security clip from the North Point tunnel.
Daniel Mercer was standing beside Vance, very much alive.
