Chapter 7 - THE CRACK IN THE ICE
The green light on Cross's detonator blinked with rhythmic, hypnotic precision.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
High on the metal catwalk, twenty feet above the concrete, Julian Cross looked down like an executioner.
Beside him, clutching an aluminum briefcase, stood Vivian.
Her white trench coat was torn, her blonde hair falling in wild strands across her face.
"Julian, hurry!" Vivian shrieked.
"The Coast Guard will blow the door!"
"Shut up, Vivian!" Cross snarled, his eyes scanning the pitch-black shadows below.
"Casimir! Throw the ledger into the center of the light!"
"You have ten seconds before I trigger the first charge!"
Down behind the salt pallets, Delia felt the cold floor vibrate beneath her knees.
She looked at Casimir.
Blood was dripping steadily from his left forearm, pooling on the concrete.
His face was an unreadable mask of carved stone.
"The ledger isn't in a folder, is it, Delia?" Casimir whispered in the dark.
Delia looked down at her right hand.
The ink stain had dried completely, dark purple against her pale skin.
"No," she said softly.
"It's on an offline flash drive."
"Where?"
"In my shoe," she said.
She slipped off her right heel.
The shallow scuff her sister had mocked at the gala was not a scuff.
It was a hidden seam in the hollow composite heel.
She twisted the rubber base.
A slim, stainless-steel micro-drive dropped into her palm.
"Every manifest for five years," she whispered.
"Every wire transfer."
"Every bribe my father paid to Commissioner Sterling."
Casimir looked at the tiny metal piece in her fingers.
A slow, terrifying smile curved the corner of his lips.
"You're a brilliant little monster, Delia Beckett."
"I was trying to keep our drivers from going to jail, Mr. Varo."
"Call me Casimir," he said.
He took the drive from her palm and slipped it into his inner vest pocket.
He looked up toward the catwalk.
"Ten seconds are up, Casimir!" Cross’s voice echoed down from the rafters.
Casimir stood up.
He stepped out from the shadow of the salt pallets into the single circle of yellow light.
He held his hands away from his sides, his pistol tucked into his waistband.
"The drive is in my pocket, Cross," Casimir called out.
His voice was dead level, cutting through the thumping of the battering ram against the exterior doors.
"Come down and get it."
Cross smiled, a predatory gleam in his dark eyes.
"Send Vivian down," Cross ordered one of his two remaining gunmen.
"If he twitches, blow his head off."
Vivian descended the narrow iron stairs of the catwalk, holding her silver revolver with both hands.
Her sapphire gown was stained with grease from the railings.
She stepped off the bottom landing, her heels clicking nervously on the concrete.
She stopped six feet from Casimir.
"Give it to me," Vivian demanded, her voice shaking with adrenaline.
"You really think he's taking you to Paris, Vivian?" Casimir asked quietly.
Vivian blinked.
"What?"
"The freighter waiting at Pier 22," Casimir said.
"It's a Panamanian bulk carrier carrying scrap iron."
"It has two passenger berths."
"One for Julian Cross."
"And one for his chief enforcer."
Vivian’s eyes widened, a flicker of doubt crossing her face.
"He promised me—"
"He promised you whatever was necessary to get your father's clearance codes," Casimir said.
Up on the catwalk, Cross’s expression hardened.
"Shoot him, Vivian! Shoot him now!"
Vivian hesitated.
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
From the darkness beside the pallet, Delia stepped forward.
Her slate-blue dress was shredded at the knee, her feet bare on the freezing concrete.
"Vivian," Delia said.
Vivian turned her gun toward her sister.
"Stay back, Delia!"
"Look at the briefcase in Cross's hand, Vivian," Delia said, her voice impossibly calm.
"The combination lock."
"It's set to 8-2-0."
"Eight hundred twenty thousand dollars."
"The exact amount Father owed Casimir."
"Julian didn't bring forty million."
"He brought the counterfeit debt papers."
"He's leaving you with the police."
Vivian looked up at the catwalk.
Cross wasn't watching Casimir anymore.
Cross had leveled his carbine directly at Vivian’s back.
"Goodbye, darling," Cross sneered.
BANG.
Cross fired.
Casimir moved before the shell casing hit the catwalk.
He lunged forward, tackling Vivian to the concrete floor just as the high-velocity bullet gouged a three-inch crater into the stone where her chest had been.
The exterior warehouse doors gave way with a deafening crash of splintering steel.
Flashbangs exploded in the room in blinding white flashes.
BANG-FLASH!
BANG-FLASH!
"FEDERAL AGENTS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!"
Dozens of tactical officers in black body armor poured through the smoke, their laser sights painting the walls in red webs.
Cross turned to run along the catwalk toward the emergency fire escape.
Casimir rolled to his feet.
He drew his pistol from his waistband in one fluid, beautiful motion.
He didn't aim for the chest.
He aimed for the high-voltage cable suspended above the catwalk.
Crack.
The severed copper cable whipped through the air like a live serpent, striking the steel walkway with an explosion of blue electrical fire.
Ten thousand volts surged through the metal grating.
Cross shrieked as the current seized his muscles, his body thrown over the railing into empty air.
He fell twenty feet, crashing onto the wooden crates below in a shower of shattered cedar and packing straw.
The aluminum briefcase burst open on impact.
Strokes of paper fluttered through the smoke like white ash.
Not bearer bonds.
Blank, unprinted sheets of commercial bond paper.
Silence descended upon Warehouse Seven.
The tactical officers secured the perimeter, pinning Cross’s surviving gunmen to the floor with knee strikes and zip-ties.
Vivian lay on the concrete, weeping uncontrollably, her face pressed into her ruined white coat.
Casimir stood over her, his breathing heavy, his gun lowered.
He turned toward Delia.
She was standing beneath the single yellow light, shivering from the cold, but her chin was held high.
He walked over to her.
He pulled off his heavy charcoal tuxedo jacket with his uninjured right hand.
He draped it gently over her bare, trembling shoulders.
The wool was warm.
It smelled of rain, cedarwood, and the fierce, protective presence of the man who had kept her alive.
"Are you whole, Delia?" he asked softly.
She looked up into his pale, fierce eyes.
"I am whole, Casimir."
She looked at her sister on the floor, then at the federal agents hauling her father away in steel handcuffs.
"What happens now?"
Casimir reached out.
His warm, calloused thumb gently wiped away a smudge of soot from her cheek.
May you like
"Now," Casimir said, "we go to the Port Authority."
"And we take back what belongs to you."
