Chapter 30 - Blood on the Black Ice
The interceptor leaped forward across the black water like an arrow, its engines screaming at full throttle.
Gunfire erupted from the patrol boat. High-caliber rounds chewed through the fiberglass hull, shattering the windshield into thousands of diamond fragments. Daniel stayed low behind the reinforced transom, shielding Leo and Julian with his entire body.
"Now!" Daniel yelled.
He pulled the pin on both distress canisters, tossing them onto the fuel tanks in the stern, and fired the flare gun directly into the pool of leaking gasoline.
A wall of orange fire erupted behind them, illuminating the river in blinding, hellish light.
Daniel kicked open the side dive door and leaped into the black, icy current just as the interceptor slammed into the patrol boat’s steel hull at fifty knots.
The explosion shook the riverbed, a massive fireball consuming both vessels in a deafening shockwave of fire and twisted metal. Flaming debris rained down into the water, hissing as it struck the surface.
Daniel surfaced fifty feet away, near the frozen shallows of the French bank, coughing water, his arms locked securely around Leo and Julian. The boys were screaming, gasping for air against the sudden shock of the freezing river.
Daniel dragged them through the mud, crawling up the steep, snow-covered embankment until they collapsed beneath the cover of the dense French pines.
Across the river, the patrol boat was burning, silhouettes of armed men scrambling through the smoke. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Daniel collapsed onto his back, staring up into the dark sky, his lungs burning, his body numb from hypothermia.
Leo lay beside him, his small face pressed into Daniel’s chest. Julian was on Daniel’s other side, his hand gripping Leo’s wrist, their matching silver bracelets reflecting the distant orange flames of the wreckage.
"We made it," Leo whispered, his voice trembling with exhausted relief. "Dad... we're safe."
"Not yet," Daniel breathed, forcing himself to sit up, scanning the dark forest around them. "We're not safe until Arthur is in the ground."
Julian looked at Daniel, his young face hardened by an ancient resolve. "He won't stop, Daniel. He doesn't care about the money. He cares about the third vault."
Daniel turned to look at the boy. "The third vault? What are you talking about?"
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"The altar," Julian whispered, his eyes wide in the dark. "You thought the wedding was about Leo and me. But the bride... the woman with the fake baby... she wasn't just an actress."
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