Chapter 6 - The Shattered Ice
Daniel’s face twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated rage. The suave, arrogant posture he had maintained evaporated, replaced by the desperate fury of a trapped predator.
"You gave my company to a bastard child and a homeless girl?" Daniel roared, his finger tightening on the trigger.
BANG.
The gunshot shattered the boathouse silence, echoing off the wooden rafters like thunder.
Elliot didn't flinch—because he was already moving.
At the exact moment Daniel raised his arm, Marcus Vance stepped through the side door, firing a single shot that struck the iron railing beside Daniel’s hand. The ricochet sent sparks flying into Daniel’s face, causing his shot to go wild, the bullet splintering the cedar catwalk inches from Elliot’s feet.
Daniel stumbled backward onto the deck of the boat, dropping his flashlight into the dark water below.
"Elliot, down!" Marcus yelled, advancing along the catwalk with his weapon trained on the boat.
"Don't shoot!" Elliot shouted, lunging forward. "He has the master encryption drive on his person! We need him alive to clear Anna’s name!"
Daniel scrambled up the steps to the boat’s flybridge. With a desperate shove, he slammed the throttle levers forward. The twin diesel engines roared to life, churning the dark water of the slip into a froth of white foam.
The heavy vessel surged forward, smashing through the locked timber doors of the boathouse and breaking out into the open, storm-tossed waters of Lake Erie.
"He’s getting away!" Marcus shouted, reaching the end of the shattered catwalk.
"He won't make it two miles," Elliot said, watching the boat’s stern lights bounce violently against the massive waves. "The winter ice pack came in from the north afternoon. The bay is frozen solid."
Outside, the storm raged with terrifying force. The Wanderer slammed through the inner bay’s slush, its powerful hull cutting a path through the black water. But half a mile from shore, where the open lake met the bay, a solid wall of three-foot-thick pack ice stretched as far as the eye could see.
Daniel didn't see the ice wall in the dark.
The boat struck the shelf at thirty knots.
A sound like tearing metal roared across the water as the vessel’s fiberglass hull rode up onto the ice sheet, tilted wildly to port, and capsized with a catastrophic crunch.
Elliot and Marcus ran along the icy shoreline, their flashlights cutting through the driving snow.
"There!" Marcus pointed.
The boat lay on its side fifty yards off the beach, half-submerged in the freezing water, its hull cracked open like an eggshell. A figure was crawling out of the shattered wheelhouse onto the slippery ice shelf, gasping for air, shivering violently in the sub-zero wind.
Elliot didn't hesitate. He grabbed a coil of heavy nylon dock line from the boathouse ruins, tied one end around his waist, and handed the other to Marcus.
"If I fall through, pull me back," Elliot said.
May you like
"Elliot, it’s too dangerous!" Marcus warned. "The ice is unstable!"
"I spent nine years believing I let him die," Elliot said, stepping out onto the ice sheet. "I’m not letting the truth sink to the bottom of this lake."
