Chapter 15 - The Vault of the Dead
The revelation left the theater colder than the winter air outside.
Ethan stood by the charred scaffolding, his pistol lowered, watching the water drip from the gilded plaster work above us.
Marcus emerged from the backstage gloom, his face streaked with soot, holding his iron crowbar across his chest like a sentinel who knew the hour was late.
"Is it true, Marcus?" I asked, turning toward the only man who had known my father longer than I had been alive.
Marcus looked down at the puddle of black water pooling around his boots.
"Julian didn't want you to know," Marcus answered, his voice cracking with old grief. "He took the retainer from Harrison Carter thirty years ago to build the underground storage. When you met Ethan at that gallery opening in Lincoln Park, Julian tried to shut it down. He told Harrison the account was closed. Harrison told him nobody leaves the table alive."
"And my father thought he could blackmail them into letting me go," I said, the pieces of the nightmare locking into place with horrific clarity.
"He copied the microfilm records," Ethan said, stepping closer, though he kept his distance out of respect for the revulsion written across my face. "He hid them inside the lockbox with Roman’s original offshore contracts. That was the leverage he was carrying in his briefcase the night his car went over the embankment."
"Where is the combination, Marcus?" I demanded, my voice ringing clear through the ruined auditorium.
Marcus reached into his pocket and pulled out an old silver pocket watch that had belonged to my grandfather.
He pried open the inner mechanical casing with the tip of his pocketknife, revealing three rows of numbers stamped into the brass movement.
"Julian told me that if you ever came back to this theater, I was supposed to let you rebuild it," Marcus murmured. "He said you were the only Montgomery who knew how to balance an account without losing your soul."
We didn't wait for morning.
We went down into the flooded belly of the structure, navigating the dripping corridors until we stood before the steel hatchway marked *J.M. & H.C.*
My hands were covered in ash as I gripped the brass dial.
Four turns right to forty-two.
Three turns left to seventeen.
Two turns right to eighty-nine.
The final counter-turn locked into place with a mechanical thud that reverberated through the stone floor like the heartbeat of an awakening beast.
I seized the chrome spoke-handle and threw my weight against it.
The door groaned on rusted hinges, parting with a rush of stale, pressurized air that had been sealed since the year I was born.
Inside, resting upon an iron pedestal under the yellow glare of our flashlights, was not a mound of gold or bearer bonds.
May you like
It was an olive-drab steel military footlocker, locked with a brass Master Lock, and beside it, an audio tape recorder with a cassette labeled in my father’s elegant, unmistakable script:
*For Claire — When the Walls Fall Down.*
