CHAPTER 10: THE ABANDONED DREDGE
A freezing wave crashed over Sarah’s head, drowning her desperate scream in the dark ocean.
The biting cold of the San Francisco Bay shifted from agonizing pain to lethal numbness.
It was shutting down her internal organs, turning her shivering limbs into useless lead.
Sarah kicked her legs, keeping her head barely above the rolling, toxic black swells.
She held Lily by the thick straps of the bright orange emergency life vest.
“Keep your chin out of the water, sweetie,” Sarah choked out, spitting foul-tasting saltwater from her blue lips.
“I cannot feel my fingers anymore, Mom,” Lily whimpered, her teeth clattering together like broken glass.
Despite the terrifying numbness taking over her body, the eleven-year-old girl kept her fist clamped shut around the silver hard drive.
A sickening gurgle echoed from the dark water directly to their left.
Vance was drowning.
The ruthless mafia boss had finally lost his battle against the massive blood loss from his gunshot wound.
His dark eyes rolled back into his head, and his muscular body slipped helplessly beneath the freezing waves.
“Vance,” Sarah screamed over the howling coastal wind, reaching out blindly into the darkness.
Her frozen fingers caught the soaked collar of his expensive Italian dress shirt.
She yanked him upward, forcing his face back above the rushing water just as he inhaled a desperate breath.
“You are not allowed to die and leave us alone out here,” Sarah yelled, slapping his pale, freezing cheek.
Have you ever found an impossible reserve of physical strength when the people you love are out of options?
Vance coughed up a terrifying amount of dark ocean water mixed with fresh blood.
“Let me go,” Vance wheezed, his arrogant command stripped down to a pathetic, dying rattle.
“If I go under, the Sato syndicate will assume the drive is lost at sea.”
“I am not going to let a wounded man drown directly in front of my daughter,” Sarah fired back, wrapping her numb arm firmly under his uninjured shoulder.
“Look at the red blinking light in the fog,” Lily announced, pointing a trembling finger into the thick mist.
Sarah turned her head rapidly, squinting through the stinging saltwater and the lingering smoke from the exploded boat.
A rhythmic, dull red beacon pulsed slowly in the darkness about fifty yards away.
“It is a channel marker,” Sarah gasped, a surge of pure adrenaline forcing her frozen legs to kick harder.
“It’s an old, abandoned dredging barge,” Vance corrected weakly, his heavy eyes struggling to stay open.
“Swim toward the rusted metal tires hanging off the side.”
Sarah dragged the heavy, bleeding billionaire through the violent waves, fueled by nothing but raw, maternal panic.
The dark, imposing silhouette of a flat-bottomed industrial barge materialized through the heavy fog.
It looked like a floating graveyard of rusted cranes and decaying metal shipping containers.
Sarah slammed against the slimy, barnacle-covered steel hull of the massive barge.
“Grab the rusted ladder right above your head,” Sarah instructed Lily, pushing the girl upward.
Lily reached out with her freezing hands, wrapping her fingers around the lowest rung of the metal ladder.
She scrambled upward with shocking agility, collapsing onto the flat, rusted deck of the barge.
“I cannot pull myself up,” Vance groaned, his heavy body slipping dangerously back down into the abyss.
“Yes, you can,” Sarah roared, grabbing him by his leather belt.
She placed her foot squarely against the slimy steel hull, using every ounce of her remaining strength to shove the massive man out of the water.
Vance collapsed onto the rusted deck, gasping for air as fresh blood poured from his ruined shoulder.
Sarah climbed up directly behind him, collapsing onto her back as the night air ripped mercilessly through her wet uniform.
They had survived the drowning, but the freezing temperature of the metal deck was going to kill them in minutes.
“We need to get out of this wind right now,” Sarah panicked, forcing herself back onto her hands and knees.
She grabbed Lily’s hand, dragging the shivering child toward the dark control cabin of the abandoned crane.
The heavy steel door was rusted shut, refusing to budge an inch against her desperate pulling.
“Step out of the way,” Vance commanded, stumbling toward the door like a resurrected corpse.
He lifted his soaked leather boot and kicked the rusted door handle with terrifying, brutal force.
The ancient metal lock shattered, allowing the heavy steel door to swing inward.
Sarah rushed inside instantly, pulling Lily out of the violent coastal storm.
The interior of the cabin was pitch-black, smelling heavily of ancient diesel fuel, rotting wood, and wet rust.
Vance stumbled in behind them, slamming the steel door shut to seal out the freezing wind.
He collapsed against the back wall, sliding down the rusted metal until he hit the floor with a sickening thud.
“My shoulder is torn open again,” Vance admitted, his terrifying facade finally shattering.
Sarah dropped to her knees in the darkness, frantically ripping the ruined apron off her waitressing uniform.
She pressed the wet fabric directly against his bullet wound, trying desperately to stop the flow of hot blood.
“Mom, the silver box is making a very strange noise,” Lily whispered, ignoring the medical emergency.
The eleven-year-old girl held the heavy metal hard drive up in the darkness.
The small green light had turned into a rapid, blinking red strobe.
A high-pitched, electronic whining sound echoed softly from the cold metal casing.
Vance let out a dark, bitter laugh that instantly turned into a chest-rattling cough.
“Your dead husband was a ruthless, brilliant monster,” Vance muttered, spitting hot blood onto the dark floor.
“What exactly does that blinking red light mean?” Sarah demanded, pressing harder onto his bleeding chest.
“It means the drive has an automatic dead-man’s switch built into the casing,” Vance explained, gasping heavily for every breath.
“It is actively broadcasting our exact GPS location to anyone holding the proper encryption keys.”
Sarah felt the remaining air vanish from her exhausted lungs.
“Who has those encryption keys?” Sarah whispered, terrified of the answer.
“Victor has the primary keys,” Vance answered brutally. “But the Federal Bureau of Investigation has the secondary backup keys.”
If you realized the police, the feds, and the mafia were all hunting you simultaneously, where could you possibly run?
“Then the police are going to save us,” Sarah reasoned desperately, a sliver of foolish hope breaking through her panic.
“If the FBI finds us out here, they will shoot you and your daughter dead and blame Victor,” Vance corrected sharply.
“The federal agents tracking this specific case are on Victor’s payroll.”
Sarah stared at the blinking red drive in her daughter’s hands, realizing it was not a shield, but a lethal tracking beacon.
“We have to throw it into the ocean right now,” Sarah panicked, reaching for the heavy silver box.
“If you throw it away, they will torture you until you confess exactly where you dropped it,” Vance warned, grabbing her wrist with his bloody hand.
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Sarah screamed, the crushing weight of their situation breaking her mind.
“We need to enter the master override password to kill the tracker,” Vance stated, looking directly at the young girl standing in the dark.
“Lily, look at the back of the drive again,” Sarah pleaded, terrified of the approaching sirens echoing distantly through the fog.
Lily turned the silver drive over, staring intensely at the meticulous scratches covering the cold metal.
“There is no password written here, Mom,” Lily stated softly, her copper eyes reflecting the violent red strobe light.
“Mark had to leave a clue,” Vance growled angrily. “He was obsessed with leaving numerical riddles.”
“He did leave a clue,” Lily corrected calmly, tracing the scratches with her numb finger.
“Read it aloud right now,” Vance demanded, his voice dropping to a desperate whisper.
“It says, ‘Do not trust the grave, because I am ‘”
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