Chapter 65 - The Iron Threshold of Devil's Island
Arthur moved with an unnatural, violent speed, surprising for a man of seventy. He didn't draw a weapon; he threw his entire weight toward the oak table, kicking it savagely into Marilyn's shins. The blow knocked her off balance, her revolver discharging with an ear-splitting bang that sent a lead slug through the wooden ceiling.
Chloe screamed, diving under the pine bench.
Thomas lunged forward to tackle Arthur, but the older man had already seized the heavy brass oil lamp from the sideboard, swinging it in a wide, vicious arc. The brass base slammed into Thomas’s temple with a sickening thud, dropping the burly tug captain to his hands and knees on the floorboards.
Arthur turned on me, his face twisted into an expression of raw, predatory desperation. "Give me the pouch, Amanda!"
I didn't run toward the ladder. With Ruby strapped securely against my chest, I backed directly toward the cast-iron stove, wrenching the heavy front latch open with my gloved left hand. Inside, the hickory logs were a roaring vortex of white-hot coals.
"Stop!" Arthur cried out, halting five feet away, his hands outstretched in sheer terror. "Don't do it! Donald’s entire estate—the deed to sixty thousand acres—it's all in that calfskin ledger!"
"You killed Donald," I said, holding the wax-sealed pouch of Vault Nine over the open maw of the stove. "You let Julian bleed to death in the lake. You brought armed mercenaries to slaughter us in the Apostle shallows. You aren't my father. My father is buried in the Vance family plot in Marquette."
"Amanda, think of the child!" Arthur pleaded, his voice breaking into a ragged sob. "That ledger contains the trusts for her entire future! Ruby will be the wealthiest heiress in the Midwest! Without those surveys, the land reverts to the state! It becomes worthless scrub!"
"She won't need your blood money," I said.
I dropped the pouch directly into the center of the coals.
The dried calfskin hissed violently as the heat hit it. The red wax seal blistered, blackened, and burst into brilliant violet flame as the ancient paper inside curled into ash. Arthur let out an inhuman howl of agony and lunged forward, throwing his bare hands directly into the open stove to drag the ledger from the fire.
"Arthur, no!" Marilyn shouted from the floor.
Arthur’s hands clamped onto the burning leather. The smell of scorched skin and burning calfskin filled the cabin instantly. He screamed, dropping the flaming fragments onto the pine floorboards, stamping frantically on the embers as the draft from the broken window caught the sparks.
Within seconds, the dry pine boards of the century-old lightkeeper’s house ignited. A sheet of orange fire rolled up the wall, feeding on the dry horsehair insulation and decades of lead paint.
"Out!" Thomas coughed, dragging himself up from the floor, his face covered in fresh blood. He grabbed Chloe by the arm and shoved her toward the exterior door leading out to the light tower’s cliffside gallery. "Amanda! Marilyn! The roof is going!"
I didn't look back at Arthur Vance. He was down on his knees among the spreading flames, his burned, blackened hands desperately pawing through the smoldering ash of the ledger, sobbing Donald’s name like a madman as the fire consumed the walls around him.
We burst through the exterior timber door onto the open catwalk of the Devil’s Island Light.
The Arctic blizzard hit us with full force, but below, through the swirl of horizontal snow, the scene had radically changed.
The xenon searchlights of the cutter were no longer pointed at the cliffs. Red and blue strobes were flashing against the black water of the channel. Out in the deep water, two massive, white-hulled cutters bearing the bold orange diagonal stripes of the United States Coast Guard had emerged from the squall, flanking the syndicate's vessel, their deck guns trained on the mercenaries' bridge.
Over the wail of the wind, the thunder of a heavy twin-engine helicopter echoed across the island as a Sikorsky Jayhawk hovered fifty feet above the lantern tower, its floodlight pinning us against the railing in brilliant, life-saving white.
Down in my coat, Ruby let out a loud, clear cry against my collarbone.
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Marilyn collapsed against the iron railing beside me, the spent revolver slipping from her fingers into the sea below. She looked up at the helicopter’s winch descending through the blizzard, then turned to me with a faint, blood-streaked smile.
"Donald always kept a third audit, Amanda," Marilyn whispered over the roar of the rotors. "And he gave that one to the Department of Justice."
