Chapter 56 - The Severed Grip
The cold did not merely bite; it burned. Julian’s skin was slick with sweat and freezing harbor spray, his heavy wool coat soaked through with Lake Superior’s spray and his own hot, bubbling blood. The iron rail pressed ruthlessly against my sternum, and every shudder of the *Eleanor V* threatened to pitch Ruby and me over the gunwale into the churning dark.
"Amanda..." Julian whispered again. His fingers, numb and stiffening, fought for purchase against my wrist. His gold wedding band scraped against my skin—a hollow ghost of promises made in an entirely different lifetime.
Down in the sling across my chest, Ruby shifted, letting out a sharp, frightened wail as my posture forced her against the cold steel railing.
"Julian, I can't hold you!" I screamed over the roar of the diesels. "You're pulling her down!"
A high-caliber round slammed into the iron plate beneath my boots with the concussive crack of a thunderbolt, spattering rust and flecks of paint across my cheek. On the coal dock, the gray-clad silhouettes were reloading, advancing along the timbered edge as the gap between the ship and the pier widened to six feet, then eight.
Julian looked down at the black, foaming vortex where the massive bronze propeller chewed the ice into slush. Then his eyes drifted upward, fixing not on me, but on the bundle pressed against my chest. In that fractured second, the vanity, the cowardice, and the scheming entitlement that had governed him since Donald’s death seemed to drain out with the blood soaking his collar.
"Keep her safe," he breathed.
"No—Julian, grab the rung!"
Before I could lock my second hand onto his forearm, Julian deliberately relaxed his grip. His fingers uncurled. The gold band slid past my knuckles, slick with seawater, and he dropped.
A heavy hand clamped onto the collar of my jacket and hauled me violently backward onto the non-skid steel deck. Thomas had abandoned the wheelhouse just long enough to drag me out of the line of fire. Bullets chewed through the wooden trim of the cabin door where I had been standing an instant before.
"Thomas, he fell!" I gasped, scrambling to shield Ruby with my body as glass rained down from the wheelhouse windows.
"Look down, Amanda! He hit the ice fender!" Thomas barked, pointing a thick, oil-stained finger over the stern.
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Julian had not fallen into the screws. His body had crashed heavily into the massive, braided rope fender suspended along the tug’s waterline. He was clinging to the frozen hemp with his uninjured arm, half-submerged in the freezing lake, his legs trailing in the foamy wake as the *Eleanor V* surged forward into the deep water of the harbor.
"Get to the hatch!" Thomas ordered, lunging back toward the pilothouse. "I’m swinging the stern away from their line of fire!"
