Two days after my father-in-law died, my husband brought his mistress into our kitchen, / Chapter 73 / 80

Chapter 73 - The Road to Grand Portage

A convoy of four armored Suburbans tore north through the pitch-black pre-dawn along Highway 61.

To our right, Lake Superior was an infinite expanse of churning black slate and broken shelf ice, illuminated only by the intermittent glow of the flashing blue emergency lights on our roof. Snow flurries whipped against the reinforced windshield in long, frantic streaks. Inside the lead vehicle, Ruby lay bundled tightly in a temperature-controlled tactical crib strapped between Marilyn and me.

Thomas was with us, sitting across the aisle with a heavy bandage taped over his temple, his face pale but his eyes razor-sharp. Despite the doctor’s orders at St. Luke’s, he had refused to stay behind.

"Julian is dead, Amanda," Thomas said quietly, staring out at the frozen shore. "The Coast Guard recovered his coat and his radio beacon near the Devil's Island breakers two hours ago. The currents dragged him under the shelf ice. He spent his whole life trying to inherit a throne his father never built for him, and Arthur abandoned him the second he ceased to be useful."

I tightened my grip on Donald’s heavy brass key, which hung from a paracord around my neck. "Donald knew what Arthur was. That’s why he made the locks dual-custody. Marilyn, does Arthur have the second key?"

Marilyn tapped Donald’s *Shadow Protocol* binder against her knees. "He doesn't need a key to get inside the perimeter. Arthur built the drainage seals himself forty years ago. But the master vault door—the core mechanism beneath the Superior Trench—is wired to an acoustic frequency cylinder. Donald held one cylinder; Arthur had the other. If Arthur doesn't have Donald’s cylinder, he’ll have to blast the hydraulic seals with thermite."

"And if he blasts them?" Thomas asked.

"Then the atmospheric pressure inside the submerged cavern collapses," Marilyn said coldly. "Ten million cubic meters of freezing Lake Superior water will flood the shaft within six minutes, destroying the archive and triggering an environmental catastrophe across the entire western basin. Arthur won't care. If he can't possess Donald’s legacy, he will drown it forever."

"He won't get the chance," Agent Lin said from the front passenger seat, turning to face us. "We’ve mobilized the Coast Guard Cutter *Alder*, a two-hundred-and-twenty-foot icebreaker based out of Duluth. She’s already steaming toward the Isle Royale channel to cut off his approach. But radar shows three high-speed civilian vessels running without transponders near the Canadian border reef. Arthur has mercenaries on the water right now."

The radio crackled on Lin's dashboard. A distorted, urgent voice broke through the speaker: *"Command, this is Grand Portage Sector Post! We have lost contact with the maritime radar outpost at Pigeon River! Shots reported on the commercial docks! Repeat, heavy gunfire at the pier!"*