Chapter 60 - The Light at Devil's Shelf
The collision came not with a gentle scraping, but with a sound like iron tearing against the teeth of the earth.
The *Eleanor V* shuddered violently as her keel ground into the underwater sandstone shelf of Devil’s Island. The impact threw me to the floor, my arms locking like a steel vice around Ruby as the cabin tilted sharply to an angle of twenty degrees. Steam roared from the engine hatch below, accompanied by the frantic, terrified screams of Chloe and Julian.
"She’s grounded!" Thomas shouted, his face bleeding from a cut across his hairline where he had struck the wheel. "Out! Everybody out through the starboard hatch! Onto the rock shelf before she slips back into the trench!"
I pushed through the warped iron door into the biting fury of the gale. The wind hit us with the force of a solid wall, carrying the stinging, sub-zero fury of the Arctic. Before us rose the towering, sandstone cliffs of the island, riddled with sea caves where the freezing surf thundered like artillery. Perched high above the cliff edge, the abandoned brick tower of the Devil’s Island Light stood like a blind sentinel against the driving snow.
Marilyn emerged behind me, dragging Julian by his good arm, while Chloe crawled on her hands and knees across the icy deck. We scrambled over the battered gunwale, dropping four feet onto the jagged, slick shelf of ice-coated rock.
Fifty yards out in the deeper channel, the searchlights of the pursuing cutter pinned us against the red sandstone cliff, carving our shadows against the frozen rock in high relief. The cutter’s engines idled in a menacing, low-frequency hum as a rigid-inflatable boat hit the black water from its stern slipway, filled with six heavily armed men.
Suddenly, from high up on the observation catwalk of the supposedly abandoned lighthouse, a single, blinding halogen floodlight clicked on, illuminating the entire shoreline in an unnatural, stark white brilliance.
A man stepped out onto the iron balcony high above us, sheltered from the blizzard by a heavy oilskin duster. He held a brass loud-hailer to his lips.
His voice boomed out over the howling wind, echoing through the sea caves like an iron bell.
"Welcome home, Amanda," the voice rang out, deep, resonant, and unmistakably familiar. "You brought Donald's key. Now come up and see what your father left you."
May you like
Julian froze on the ice, his blood-drained face turning slowly upward toward the light.
"God help us," Julian whispered, collapsing to his knees. "That's not Donald's partner. That's your father."
