Chapter 50 - The Edge of the Glass Abyss
The glass panels facing the sea had shattered from the gale, letting the freezing ocean wind howl through the room.
Eleanor stood with her back to the drop, her soaked hair whipping wildly around her sunken face.
Her left arm hung limp at her side, broken and dislocated at the shoulder from the boathouse blast.
Yet in her good hand, she held a marine flare gun, cocked and pointed straight at Arthur’s heart.
"You really don't know when to stay dead, do you, Arthur?" Eleanor mocked, her voice hoarse and cracked.
Arthur stepped past Vance, ignoring the wind that tore at his clothes, stopping just ten feet away.
"Why, Eleanor?" Arthur screamed over the roar of the storm. "Why did you keep me alive for so long?"
Eleanor chuckled, a dry, rattling sound that turned into a bloody cough.
"Because the ledger has a biometric failsafe, you idiot!" she spat, wiping blood from her cracked lips.
"If your heart stops beating before the key is extracted with the proprietary scan, the data corrupts permanently!"
Arthur stared at her, horrified by the cold, scientific cruelty behind her madness.
"You kept me breathing like a dog on a chain just to protect your numbers," Arthur whispered.
"And now Davenport is dead, the cutter has abandoned the cove, and your little detective friend is out of options," she hissed.
She slowly shifted the aim of the flare gun, pointing it down toward the floorboards beneath her feet.
Arthur looked down.
The floor was soaked in clear, pungent liquid from two punctured fifty-gallon drums of industrial kerosene.
The entire lantern room was a bomb waiting for a spark.
"We go down together, darling," Eleanor snarled, her finger tightening on the heavy brass trigger. "Just like we promised in our vows."
Before Vance could raise his rifle, a sudden, heavy shadow stepped out from the gear housing behind Arthur.
A cold steel barrel pressed firmly against the base of Arthur’s skull.
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A voice whispered from the darkness, smooth and triumphant:
"Drop the weapon, Detective, or Arthur's heart stops beating before the scan is complete."
