Chapter 6 - THE TICKET
Drive off the cliff.
Hannah stared at the dark, churning expanse of Lake Michigan illuminated by the flashing lightning. The drop was fifty feet of jagged rocks and freezing water.
“You’re asking me to kill us!” Hannah screamed into the speakerphone.
Machine-gun fire battered the back of the SUV, spiderwebbing the rear window. Dominic’s men were approaching in a pair of black sedans, their headlights blinding in her rearview mirror.
“The armor will hold upon impact with the water,” Vincent’s voice commanded through the static. “The car is amphibious for three minutes. Open the glovebox, Hannah! Now!”
Hannah reached over, her hand trembling violently, and popped the glove compartment.
Inside sat a thick, plastic-sealed envelope.
She ripped it open.
It wasn’t a single ticket. It was a pair of boarding passes for a private charter flight out of O'Hare. And wrapped inside the tickets was a heavy, waterproof GPS transponder, blinking with a steady green light.
“I have the transponder,” Hannah yelled.
“My extraction team is waiting in a boat at the base of the cliff,” Vincent explained rapidly, his breathing labored. “The second the car hits the water, they will lock onto that signal. They will pull you out before you sink. But you have to jump.”
Hannah looked in the rearview mirror. The two pursuit sedans were fifty yards away. Men were leaning out of the windows, raising heavy rifles.
She looked back at Sophia, huddled on the floorboards, clutching a stuffed bear.
“Hold on tight, baby,” Hannah whispered.
She slammed the gearshift back into Drive.
She pressed the accelerator flat to the floor.
The heavy armored SUV roared, tearing off the asphalt and onto the slick, wet grass. She aimed the vehicle directly at the wrought-iron fence bordering the cliff edge.
“She’s going for the water!” a voice crackled over the radio intercept on Vincent's end of the phone call.
Hannah closed her eyes.
The SUV smashed through the heavy iron fence like it was made of matchsticks.
For three terrifying seconds, there was absolute weightlessness.
The roar of the engine was replaced by the howling wind. Hannah’s stomach dropped into her shoes. Sophia screamed in the back seat.
Then, the impact.
CRASH.
The SUV hit the freezing waters of Lake Michigan with the force of a bomb going off.
The airbags deployed instantly, punching Hannah in the chest and filling the cabin with white powder. The reinforced glass shattered, but the thick ballistic lamination held it in place, keeping the freezing water from instantly flooding the interior.
The heavy vehicle plunged deep beneath the surface, the darkness absolute.
Hannah gasped for air, fighting the deflating airbag.
“Sophia!” she coughed, ripping her seatbelt off.
“I’m here!” the little girl cried from the back, miraculously unhurt.
The SUV began to stabilize, bobbing slowly back toward the surface thanks to the sealed cabin, just as Vincent had promised. But the pressure was immense, and water was already beginning to seep through the cracked seals of the doors.
They had three minutes.
Hannah grabbed the blinking green transponder and shoved it down the front of her uniform.
She crawled into the backseat. “We have to get out when the door opens. Take a deep breath.”
Suddenly, a loud, metallic THUNK echoed against the roof of the sinking SUV.
A heavy, industrial magnet locked onto the metal frame.
Through the cracked, bubbling windows, Hannah saw the distorted lights of a massive, stealth-black speedboat idling on the turbulent surface above them.
Divers in dark wetsuits appeared outside the windows. One of them attached a heavy winch cable to the door handle.
With a violent jerk, the armored door was ripped open.
Freezing water rushed into the cabin, instantly soaking Hannah to the bone.
A diver reached in, grabbing Sophia first. He pulled the child to the surface.
Hannah took a final, desperate breath and kicked out of the sinking car, swimming upward toward the churning lights.
Strong hands grabbed her uniform, hauling her over the side of the sleek speedboat. She collapsed onto the fiberglass deck, coughing up lake water, shivering uncontrollably.
A medic immediately wrapped a heavy thermal foil blanket around her and Sophia.
“We have them!” the team leader yelled into a headset. “Go! Go! Go!”
The speedboat’s twin engines roared, tearing across the dark water, leaving the sinking SUV and Dominic’s men standing helpless on the cliff above.
Hannah huddled with Sophia, staring back at the estate high on the hill.
The entire west wing was engulfed in flames.
Dominic had set the manor on fire.
“Vincent,” Hannah whispered, her heart seizing. She lunged for the medic. “The man in the house! Did he get out?”
The medic pressed her back down. “Stay down, ma'am. He told us to get you to the airfield.”
“I’m not leaving him!” Hannah screamed, surprising herself with the ferocity of her own voice.
Before the medic could argue, a smaller, secondary speedboat cut through the waves, pulling alongside them at high speed.
Standing at the helm, his white shirt covered in soot and blood, was Vincent Duca.
Hannah burst into tears of pure relief.
Vincent jumped across the gap between the boats, landing heavily on the deck. He immediately fell to his knees beside Sophia, pulling his dripping, freezing daughter into his arms.
“I got you, piccola,” Vincent murmured into her wet hair. “I got you.”
He looked up at Hannah. His face was bruised, a nasty cut bleeding above his left eye, but he was alive.
“You jumped,” Vincent said, a mixture of awe and profound respect in his dark eyes.
“You told me to,” Hannah replied, shivering violently under the foil blanket.
Vincent reached out and gently gripped her shoulder. “You’re safe now. Both of you.”
He stood up, turning to the team leader. “Get them to the jet. Fly them to the safe house in Montreal. Dominic doesn't know about that location.”
Hannah frowned, clutching the thermal blanket tight.
“What about you?” she asked.
Vincent looked back at the burning manor on the cliff.
“Dominic burned my home,” Vincent said, his voice dropping to a whisper that chilled Hannah more than the lake water. “He tried to kill my daughter. And he murdered your mother.”
Vincent turned back to Hannah. He pulled his heavy, matte-black handgun from his waistband and checked the magazine.
“I’m not going to Montreal, Hannah.”
Hannah stood up, the boat rocking wildly beneath her.
“You’re going back to kill him,” she realized.
“Dominic won’t stop until he has the necklace,” Vincent said flatly. “And I won’t stop until he’s dead.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Hannah declared.
Vincent stared at her, stunned. “Absolutely not. You are a civilian.”
Hannah reached up to her neck. She unclasped the silver locket and held it out, the tiny gold SD card glinting in the boat’s deck lights.
“This is my mother’s legacy,” Hannah said, her voice completely steady. “Thirty million dollars of stolen money. It’s what Dominic wants. It’s what my father killed for.”
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She looked Vincent dead in the eye.
“You can’t lure Dominic out without the bait. And I am the bait.”
