Chapter 22 - Shadows Over Superior
The heavy timber of Slip Four shuddered as three men in dark tactical gear advanced down the walkway. The spotlight mounted on their low-profile vessel pinned us inside the cutter’s cabin like insects beneath a magnifying glass.
"Lenora Sterling!" a voice bellowed through an electric megaphone, cutting through the slap of frigid water against the pilings. "Step out onto the deck with the manifest box. You have thirty seconds before we scuttle that tub and take it off your floating corpse."
"They don't sound like state police," Hayes murmured grimly, checking the slide on his sidearm. "Mercenaries. Hired out of Duluth or Chicago."
"They want the 1929 manifest," I whispered, holding the oilskin tube tight against my chest. "If they sink us, the key and the charts go to the bottom of the harbor basin. They won't shoot to sink—they'll board."
"Then we make them regret setting foot on these planks," Miller growled. He racked the shotgun with a sharp, mechanical clatter that echoed through the small cabin.
Without warning, Hayes kicked open the port-side door and fired two suppression shots directly into the blinding halogen beam on their cutter. The bulb shattered in a violent shower of blue sparks, instantly plunging the pier back into the freezing midnight gloom.
A hail of automatic gunfire chewed through the upper wheelhouse, showering us in shards of tempered glass and splintered mahogany. Hayes pulled me down beneath the gunwale, his body shielding mine as the bullets tore overhead.
"Miller, the auxiliary throttle!" Hayes shouted over the din. "Cast off the aft line!"
The old captain didn't hesitate. With the agility of a man half his age, he ducked low, slammed the ignition toggle, and shoved the twin throttles forward. The cutter’s engines screamed to life, churning the black water into a tempest of white foam. The heavy vessel surged backward, snapping the weathered mooring ropes like brittle twine.
One of the boarders leaped from the pier, his boots crashing onto our foredeck. He raised a submachine gun, leveling it straight at my head.
"Drop the tube, girl!" he roared.
I didn't cower. The weeks of humiliation, the terror Beatrice had inflicted on my home, the cold arrogance of the Vance lawyers—it all surged through me in a wave of absolute fury. Grabbing a heavy bronze boat hook resting along the railing, I swung it with every ounce of strength I had, catching the intruder squarely across the knee.
He cried out in agony, collapsing against the rail. Hayes stepped over me in a flash, driving his shoulder into the man's chest and sending him tumbling over the low safety line, plunging him into the freezing, churning harbor currents below.
The cutter cleared the breakwater, bounding hard against the massive, rolling black swells of open Lake Michigan. Behind us, the hostile vessel sputtered, its props snarled in the severed steel cables Captain Miller had intentionally dropped into the channel slip.
"Where now?" Hayes breathed, wiping blood from a minor glass cut on his cheek as he pulled me to my feet.
I looked out into the vast, ink-black expanse stretching north toward the straits, feeling the cold weight of Grandfather’s silver key burning against my skin.
May you like
"Superior," I said, staring into the dark. "To Isle Royale. If the answers are buried in that lighthouse, we get there before they can regroup."
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