Chapter 37 - The Harbor Confrontation
"Liam..." I stepped back from him, the ground beneath my feet feeling as unstable as the ocean swells outside. "Is this true? Have you been playing me this entire time?"
"No, Maya! Listen to me!" Liam lowered his rifle slightly, turning his eyes toward me with desperate intensity. "I left the Trust ten years ago! When I found out what my father was doing, I severed all ties. I spent a decade gathering the evidence to tear his empire down from the inside!"
"And you used my family as your bait!" I shouted, the agonizing sting of betrayal cutting open every wound I had thought was healing. "You used my divorce, my sister's greed, my father's old debt to lure him out!"
"I used your case to protect you!" Liam shouted back, his voice cracking with raw emotion. "The Trust was already coming for your family! Julian Sterling had already initiated the liquidation protocol! If I hadn't taken your case, you and your father would have been murdered in your sleep three weeks ago!"
"How touching," Victor Vance mocked, raising his hand toward the winch controls. "A family squabble at the edge of the abyss. But unfortunately, the clock has run out. Throw the drive to me, Maya, or I release the clutch."
He placed his hand on the heavy hydraulic lever controlling Eleanor's cage. If he pulled it, the cage would plummet three hundred feet down the open moon pool, crushing Eleanor on the iron supports below before dragging her into the ocean depths.
"Wait!" I shouted, taking two steps forward toward the catwalk. "Take it!"
I hurled the quantum drive across the expanse.
The small silver device arced through the dim air. Victor Vance’s eyes tracked it, his instincts taking over as he reached out with his left hand to snatch it out of midair.
In that fraction of a second, the distraction was complete.
Liam fired.
A single, devastating round struck the hydraulic control box right beside Victor's arm, causing an electrical explosion of sparks and pressurized hydraulic fluid. The master brake locked automatically, freezing Eleanor’s cage in place.
"Sarah, take the catwalk!" Liam roared.
Gunfire erupted instantly from both sides. Sarah’s operators laid down a suppressive wall of fire, pinning Victor’s mercenaries behind the steel plating.
One of Victor’s bodyguards lunged forward, aiming an assault rifle directly at my chest. Before I could raise my weapon, Eleanor threw her weight against the side of the iron cage overhead, kicking an iron pulley loose. The heavy steel block swung down like a pendulum, striking the guard across the head and sending him tumbling over the moon pool railing.
"Maya, shoot the cable release on the winch!" Eleanor screamed through the bars.
I didn't think. I raised the handgun Liam had given me, aligned the sights with the emergency manual release pin on the winch housing, and squeezed the trigger twice.
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The pin shattered. The secondary counterweight kicked in, and the cage descended rapidly, slamming down onto the solid steel deck of the bay with a deafening crash.
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