Chapter 35 - Bloodline Ambush
The boathouse smelled of brine, wet mahogany, and gasoline. The waters of the lake sloshed violently against the cedar pilings below the grated walkway. Moored in the central slip was Helen’s pride: a vintage 1974 Hacker-Craft mahogany runabout, its twin V8 engines maintained with meticulous precision.
Above the slip hung the massive cast-iron wheel of the hydraulic drainage valve—the sluice gate mentioned in Silas Vance’s blueprints.
"Cover the tunnel entrance!" I yelled to Sarah, throwing my body against the iron wheel.
The wheel was rusted solid with decades of calcified mineral deposits. I grunted, veins bulging in my neck, pushing with every ounce of strength. It didn't budge.
*Clang!*
A bullet ricocheted off the steel walkway three inches from my foot.
I dropped to the decking. At the tunnel entrance, Clara’s two security enforcers had breached the doorway, silhouetted against the daylight. Sarah Vance fired twice—crisp, deafening cracks that echoed through the enclosed boathouse. One man collapsed instantly into the dark corridor; the second threw himself behind an overturned canoe, returning fully automatic fire.
Splinters of cedar and shattered glass rained down on us.
"Riley! The wheel!" Sarah shouted, pinned behind a structural pillar, returning fire in controlled, double-tap bursts. "We have less than thirty seconds before they flank through the exterior water-doors!"
I reached into my pocket, grabbed the heavy brass Zurich key, and looked closely at the central hub of the iron wheel. There was a tiny, recessed keyhole covered by an iron plate.
Helen hadn't just chained the valve. She had locked it with an offshore safe-deposit tumbler.
I shoved the brass key into the core. It slid home with a satisfying, mechanical *click*.
I twisted the key ninety degrees. A heavy internal counterweight dropped somewhere deep beneath the water. The massive cast-iron wheel broke free with a deafening screech of grinding metal.
I grabbed the spokes, spinning the wheel counterclockwise.
Ten feet beneath our boots, the lake floor began to roar.
It sounded like a subterranean monster waking from a century-long slumber. The water inside the boathouse slip suddenly dropped two feet in three seconds. A massive vortex formed beneath the hull of the Hacker-Craft, water rushing at thousands of gallons per second into the hidden underground drainage canal leading to the copper mines.
"What did you do?!" a shrill voice shrieked from the boathouse upper platform.
I looked up.
Clara Vance stood on the gantry above, her silver cane replaced by a nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver, her pristine coat soaked in lake spray.
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And right behind her, panting, bleeding from a gash on her temple, was Evelyn.
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