“It has nothing you don’t already know.”
“It contains Elias’s voice. Voices can be authenticated. Stories can become evidence.”
Gideon removed the recorder from his coat.
Crowe extended his hand.
“Give it to me, and the girl leaves with my men.”
Mira whispered, “He’s lying.”
Crowe smiled at her.
“Your father taught you suspicion. Unfortunately, he never taught you when suspicion becomes useless.”
Gideon studied the chamber.
The old lighthouse plans returned to him in fragments. During his rescue years, he had inspected the tunnels after a winter landslide. The vault should have contained a ventilation shaft leading to the lantern room.
The shaft had been sealed.
Or appeared to be sealed.
He looked at Isaac, then toward the rusted metal shelves against the northern wall.
Isaac understood.
Gideon tossed the recorder across the room.
Crowe’s eyes followed it.
At the same instant, Isaac drove his shoulder into the shelving.
The entire frame collapsed, revealing a narrow service hatch.
Mercer fired the flare gun at the ceiling.
Red fire exploded through the chamber.
The officers shouted and covered their faces.
Gideon grabbed Mira and pushed her through the hatch. The divers followed as smoke filled the room.
Behind them, Crowe roared, “Stop them!”
The shaft climbed almost vertically.
Iron rungs had rusted away in several places. Gideon lifted Mira from one foothold to the next while the others blocked the hatch below.
Gunshots thundered through the shaft.
A bullet struck the wall beside Gideon’s hand.
“Keep climbing!” Mercer shouted.
Mira reached a narrow platform near the top.
A second hatch blocked their escape.
She pushed against it.
“It won’t open!”
Gideon climbed beside her and struck the hatch with a cutting bar.
Once.
Twice.
The corroded lock broke.
Wind tore the hatch from his hands.
They emerged onto the exterior gallery beneath the lighthouse lantern.
The storm hit them with full force.
Rain moved sideways across the tower. The sea below had swallowed the rocks and was rising toward the tunnel entrances.
Mercer climbed out last.
“They’re coming up!”
Gideon searched the gallery.
The old emergency signal horn still hung beneath the railing. Its compressed-air tank had been removed years ago, but a manual crank remained attached to the housing.
He turned to Isaac.
“Can you make it work?”
“If the diaphragm isn’t split.”
“You have one minute.”
While Isaac opened the horn’s casing, Gideon examined the dark harbor.
The Blackwater truck was hidden beyond the cliff. Their radios had no signal inside the tower. Even if they escaped, Crowe’s men controlled the path.
Mira pointed toward the sea.
“There’s a boat.”
A small vessel moved without lights near the breakwater.
It was approaching the lighthouse.
Gideon watched its shape rise between the waves.
Not a rescue boat.
A harbor patrol craft.
Crowe’s men had sealed the coast.
Isaac connected a portable diving cylinder to the signal horn.
“Ready!”
The first officer emerged from the hatch.
Mercer struck him with the empty flare gun and pulled him onto the gallery.
A second officer fired upward.
The bullet shattered one of the lantern windows.
Gideon seized the signal crank and turned it.
The horn released a low mechanical scream that rolled across the sea.
One long blast.
Two short.
One long.
The old emergency code of the Blackwater team.
Every fisherman in Port Briar knew it.
DIVERS TRAPPED. ARMED THREAT. SEND ALL VESSELS.
Gideon repeated the signal.
The patrol craft increased its speed.
Then another horn answered from the harbor.
A fishing trawler.
A second answered farther south.
Then a third.
Lights appeared through the storm.
Dozens of fishing vessels were leaving Port Briar.
Crowe climbed onto the gallery with a pistol in his hand.
“You fool,” he said. “You think witnesses will save you?”
“No,” Gideon replied. “But they will make it harder to bury us.”
Crowe pointed the weapon at Mira.
Gideon stepped in front of her.
Before Crowe could fire, a voice came from the broken lantern room.
“Silas.”
Crowe turned.
A man stood behind the fractured glass.
He was thin, soaked, and bleeding from a wound above his right eye. A length of broken chain hung from one wrist.
Mira stopped breathing.
The man looked at her.
His pale green eyes filled with pain.
“Stay behind Gideon,” he said.
“Dad?”
Elias Vale stepped onto the gallery.
Crowe stared at him.
“You should be locked inside the patrol boat.”
“You taught your men how to guard prisoners,” Elias said. “You never taught them how to guard divers.”
Mira tried to run to him, but Gideon held her back.
Crowe’s pistol shifted toward Elias.
“You destroyed everything.”
“No,” Elias replied. “We built it together.”