Chapter 36 - THE DARK WATER
The darkness inside the culvert was absolute, heavy with the stench of stagnant river silt and fresh copper. Nicholas did not hesitate. The moment the overhead bulbs died, he shifted his weight, anticipating the desperate thrash of a dying man.
Victor lunged low, aiming his shoulder toward Nicholas’s waist in an attempt to tackle him into the churning Hudson runoff. Nicholas felt the displaced air before he felt the impact. Instead of resisting, Nicholas pivoted on his back foot, driving the butt of his SCAR rifle downward with crushing precision.
The heavy composite stock shattered Victor’s collarbone with a sickening crack.
Victor shrieked—a ragged, choked sound that echoed against the subterranean brickwork—and collapsed back into the waist-deep current.
"Maria! Don't move from the ledge!" Nicholas roared over the sudden deafening roar of water cascading through the emergency release valves.
"Nicholas! I have her!" Maria’s voice trembled from the narrow concrete catwalk six feet above him. "She’s awake, Nicholas. She’s terrified!"
Nicholas reached up, feeling through the blind blackness until his gloved fingers brushed Maria’s trench coat. He could hear Lucy’s shallow, ragged breathing—small, shuddering gasps against Maria’s neck. The little girl wasn't crying anymore; the sensory overload of gunshots, rushing water, and total darkness had frozen her into that catatonic silence Nicholas recognized all too well from war zones.
"Lucy," Nicholas said, his voice dropping into a register that was impossibly calm, an anchor in the pitch black. "Listen to my voice. Keep your eyes closed against Maria’s coat. Count to twenty. Uncle Nicholas is right beneath you."
"U-Uncle Nicholas?" her tiny whisper cracked. "The water is loud. Are the bad men coming for the cookie?"
"Nobody is taking anything from you," he said softly, even as his boots braced against the riverbed stones to haul Victor Caruso upright by the scruff of his soaked wool collar.
Victor was sputtering blood and river sludge, his right arm dangling uselessly. "Shoot me... you arrogant bastard," Victor hissed through clenched teeth. "Go on. Pull the trigger. The moment my heart stops, the dead-man relay in the manor’s grid triggers a total wipe. Every file Arthur Bell left behind. Every document Daniel Santos died to protect. Isabella won’t get them. You won’t get them. You’ll hang for all three murders."
"Isabella sealed the vault from the inside, Victor," Nicholas growled, pressing his thumb into the nerve cluster beneath the old man’s ear until Victor wheezed in agony. "She didn't lock us out to trap me. She locked us out because you told her about the federal wire twenty minutes ago. You thought you were orchestrating a cleanup. You didn't realize she was waiting for you to walk down here alone."
Through the culvert mouth sixty yards ahead, the crimson and sapphire strobes of police cruisers pulsed through the mist. The tactical helicopters dipped their searchlights across the marsh weeds, beams of blinding white cutting through the river spray.
"Caruso!" a booming voice amplified by a megaphone cut through the storm. "This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation tactical response team. The perimeter is contained. Discard your weapons and exit the tunnel with your hands visible!"
"They’re not waiting six minutes," Maria called down, panic lacing her voice. "Nicholas, they’re deploying tear gas at the mouth!"
Nicholas looked up toward the sealed iron gate behind them. The manor sub-levels were barred by four tons of reinforced steel. Forward lay seventy federal agents with shoot-to-kill orders orchestrated by Victor’s phantom warrant.
Between the rock and the river, there was only one path. The maintenance drainage conduit Arthur Bell had surveyed thirty years ago—the bypass that didn't appear on any city municipal blueprint because it had been built to smuggle bootleg whiskey during the Prohibition era.
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Nicholas dragged Victor toward the ledge, slinging his rifle across his chest. "Maria, reach down. Give me your free hand. We’re going beneath the foundation."
***
