“Twelve, perhaps fifteen. They entered through the old drainage tunnel.”
“Can we reach the boat?”
“They already destroyed it.”
Mara held the cylinder against her chest.
A new voice came through the radio.
Celestine Vale.
“Lucian, you always were most predictable when grief was involved.”
Lucian raised the radio.
“Your people are trapped in a stone tower during a coastal storm.”
“So are yours.”
“You murdered my father.”
“I corrected an employee who forgot the arrangement that made his family wealthy.”
Mara moved closer to the radio.
“And my mother?”
Celestine paused.
“Evelyn survived because she understood silence.”
“You watched her.”
“For years.”
“You sent the photograph.”
“I needed to know whether dying had made her sentimental.”
Mara gripped the cylinder.
Lucian said, “You will never leave this island with the evidence.”
Celestine laughed softly.
“I do not need to leave with it. Adrian will bring it to me.”
Silence filled the underground chamber.
Mara looked at Adrian.
He raised his gun.
Not toward the ladder.
Toward Lucian.
Lucian did not appear surprised.
“Since when?” he asked.
Adrian’s face tightened.
“Three years.”
“Why?”
“Because you planned to destroy everything.”
“I planned to destroy the Circle.”
“You planned to surrender our routes, our judges, our accounts. Thousands of men depend on what you call corruption.”
“They depend on fear.”
“They depend on money.”
Lucian’s weapon remained pointed toward the floor.
“You stood beside me for fifteen years.”
“I built this empire with you.”
“It was never ours to keep.”
Adrian’s eyes moved to the cylinder.
“Give it to me.”
Mara stepped back.
Adrian aimed at her.
Lucian shifted between them.
“Do not point a weapon at her.”
“Then make her surrender it.”
“No.”
Adrian’s expression became almost sorrowful.
“I hoped Celestine was wrong about her.”
“About what?”
“That you had developed a weakness.”
Lucian looked at Mara.
“No,” he said quietly. “She was right.”
Adrian fired.
Lucian moved.
The bullet struck his side.
Mara screamed.
Lucian fell against the wall but fired back, hitting Adrian in the thigh.
Adrian collapsed.
Mara dropped beside Lucian.
Blood spread beneath his hand.
“Stay awake,” she said.
“I am awake.”
“You were shot.”
“I noticed.”
Footsteps sounded on the ladder.
Celestine’s men were descending.
Lucian pressed his gun into Mara’s hand.
“There is a maintenance passage behind the bell housing.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You will take the cylinder and go.”
“No.”
“Mara.”
“No.”
Adrian laughed weakly from the floor.
“She really doesn’t follow instructions.”
Mara saw the four bell cables.
A memory surfaced.
Her mother tapping rhythms against the kitchen table.
Three short.
One long.
Again and again.
Not a superstition.
A code.
Mara stood.
She pulled the first bell cable.
A heavy strike echoed through the tower.
She pulled it again.
Then a third time.
She waited.
Then dragged the fourth cable with both hands.
The final bell thundered across the bay.
Lucian looked at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Sending a signal.”
“To whom?”
“Anyone who remembers the old harbor code.”
She repeated the pattern.
Three short.
One long.
The historic distress sequence used by Greyhaven signal officers before modern radio.
Her mother had taught it to her without ever explaining why.
Above them, Celestine’s men hesitated as the entire tower shook with the bells.
Mara pulled again.
And again.
Across the bay, harbor pilots, retired coast officers, tugboat captains, and marine patrol crews heard a signal that had not been used in decades.
Blackwater distress.
Armed danger at the beacon.
Celestine’s voice came through the radio.
“Stop that bell.”
Mara lifted the radio.
“Come down and stop it yourself.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Mara guided Lucian through the maintenance passage while Adrian remained wounded beside the shaft.
The tunnel was barely wide enough to crawl through.
It descended toward the sea, then turned beneath the eastern foundation.
Lucian’s breathing became rough.
Mara kept one hand against his back and held the cylinder with the other.
“You’re losing blood.”
“I have lost blood before.”
“Was it also because you refused to stay out of abandoned lighthouses?”
“Usually warehouses.”
“Good. I was worried your life lacked variety.”
He almost laughed, then winced.
They reached a rusted grate overlooking a sea cave.
Waves surged below.
An iron walkway crossed the cavern toward another tunnel.
Mara tested the grate.
Locked.
Lucian raised his weapon.
“No. The shot will tell them where we are.”
“They know where we are.”
“Not exactly.”
She examined the lock.
Her mother had taught her how harbor emergency locks worked.