Chapter 18 - The Last Catch
The shot cracked across the water. Grace jerked, sure she'd been hit. Instead, Richard's gun flew from his hand. Agent Chen stood on the lower platform, her own weapon trained upward.
“Richard Vale! Hands where I can see them!”
Richard stumbled backward into the smoke. Vincent's fingers slid against Grace's. She couldn't hold him much longer.
“Look at me,” she told him. “Not the ground.”
“I am looking at you.”
“Then stop arguing.”
She looped the loose maintenance rope around her waist, hooked one foot against an iron rung, and used her whole body as a counterweight. Marco reached the ledge from the service ladder and grabbed Vincent's jacket. Together they hauled him over the edge.
Vincent rolled onto solid stone, breathing hard. Grace sank beside him, laughing and crying at once.
He touched her cheek. “You saved me.”
“Try not to make it a habit.”
They were still catching their breath when an officer shouted from the beach. Richard had escaped through an old drainage tunnel leading away from the lighthouse. Harold was in custody, but Vanessa remained missing.
Agent Chen took Grace's recording of Pike at the clinic and the documents from Vincent's cellar. With the seized accounts, she could apply for warrants against the network's remaining businesses. But she still needed the original ledger to tie the adoption records to victims and payments.
Clara, wrapped in a blanket inside the ambulance, held Grace's face in both hands. “Daniel hid it in the music box after we escaped the first time. He made me promise never to use you as the key.”
“How do I open it?” Grace asked.
“Three taps on the broken wing. Then play the song backward.”
“Where is it now?”
“Harold took it years ago. But he was never good at hiding things he valued. He kept trophies in his office.”
Vincent turned to Marco. “Whitmore's office is in my father's old bank building.”
Grace saw the anger in his face and knew he was thinking about storming it. She caught his sleeve. “We do this with Chen. No more secret wars.”
He nodded. “No more.”
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Then Agent Chen's phone rang. She listened, went rigid, and looked at Grace.
“Vanessa just walked into our field office,” she said. “She claims she's willing to surrender. But she wants one thing in exchange: five minutes alone with you.”
