Chapter 11 - The Wolf at the Door
"Stay behind me!" Julian roared, shoving Grandma Ruth and me deeper into the narrow safety deposit alcove.
Through the heavy steel grille of the vault entryway, three men in dark raincoats pushed into the anteroom. Leading them was a tall, silver-haired man in an impeccably tailored trench coat. Despite the thirty-four years that had passed, despite the scars carved across his weathered forehead, the jawline was unmistakable from the torn photograph.
Arthur Vance wasn’t dead. He was standing twenty feet away, holding a silenced semi-automatic pistol pointed directly at the vault entrance.
"Hello, Julian," Vance said, his voice the exact baritone that had spoken to me through the phone. "Ruth, you really should have stayed in Syracuse. Old bones don't mend well in a concrete basement."
"You rotten coward," Ruth snapped back, her knuckles white on her cane. "You ran like a dog in the night while Julian took the blame for your filth!"
Vance smiled, a cold, humorless twitch of his thin lips. "Julian was conveniently naive. A romantic dreamer who thought timber boats were the future. Meanwhile, your late husband had uncovered my real business. But that's ancient history. All I want is the 1988 ledger and that microcassette. Hand them through the bars, Julian, and I might let your daughter walk out of here alive."
"You won't touch her," Julian snarled, his broad shoulders shielding me entirely. "You're trapped, Vance. The alarm is already ringing. The Geneva police are three blocks down the street."
"The Geneva police won't be coming," Vance said smoothly. "A false gas leak report pulled every squad car to the north docks ten minutes ago. We have five minutes before anyone bothers to check this alarm. Slide the ledger across the marble, Julian. Now."
I clutched the heavy ledger against my chest. My mind raced through every plumbing schematic, every pressure line, every valve system Frank and I had studied together. I looked at the ceiling above Vance's head.
Running along the vault lobby was a modern dry-pipe fire suppression system—installed during the bank’s recent renovation. And just two feet behind the security grille, right beside the manager’s station, was the emergency water-deluge manual test valve.
I caught Julian’s eye. With a subtle flick of my gaze, I signaled toward the brass lever painted bright red against the wall.
Julian understood instantly.
"You want the ledger, Vance?" Julian shouted, stepping forward and holding out his hand. "Come take it yourself!"
Vance took two arrogant steps toward the barred door.
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In that split second, Julian hurled a heavy bronze safety-deposit box cover straight through the bars into Vance’s chest. At the same moment, I lunged forward, grabbed the red deluge lever, and pulled down with all my weight.
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