Chapter 14 - Poison in the Vault
I tore off my sweatshirt and pressed it over Hall’s mouth.
“Stay low.”
The vapor descended from the ceiling, pale beneath the flickering emergency light. My eyes began burning almost immediately.
Hall fired twice into the lock mechanism. The bullets sparked but did not release the gate.
Pierce’s voice returned through the speaker.
“Your father lasted four minutes.”
The sentence was designed to break my concentration.
Instead, it gave me a time limit.
I pulled the portable drive from the forensic tablet and searched the walls. Old vaults had manual emergency releases to prevent staff from being trapped during power failures.
The mechanism would not be inside the locked customer section unless regulations had required it.
My father had known this building.
He had hidden records here because he understood its structure.
Find the paper numbers.
Not merely box numbers.
Blueprint numbers.
I looked at the safe-deposit rows. Small brass plates identified each section. Row 19. Column 48.
The number did not identify a box.
It identified a location.
I pulled at the narrow metal panel between Row 19 and Column 48. It resisted, then opened on concealed hinges.
Behind it was a red manual wheel.
Hall and I turned it together.
The gate released inch by inch.
We crawled into the corridor as the vapor thickened around our shoulders. Hall staggered near the stairs. I hooked her arm over mine and dragged her upward.
At the service exit, the door would not open.
Someone had engaged an exterior chain.
Hall handed me her weapon. I fired into the weakened hinge while she kicked beside the lock. The frame splintered, and the door collapsed outward.
Cold night air struck my face.
I pulled Hall across the pavement and rolled her onto her side. She coughed until tears ran down her cheeks.
A black SUV waited beyond the construction fence.
Ryan stood beside it.
The stolen brass key hung from his fingers.
“You should’ve stayed at the hospital,” he said.
I rose slowly.
Hall reached for her radio, but Ryan lifted a small transmitter.
“Call anyone and the marina goes up.”
A live image appeared on the phone in his other hand.
Nancy sat inside what looked like the cabin of an old boat. Her wrists were tied. Beth knelt beside her, one side of her face swollen.
Gasoline cans surrounded them.
Ryan’s hand trembled around the transmitter.
“You’re not controlling this,” I said.
“No.”
The honesty surprised me.
“Pierce is.”
“Then why are you helping him?”
“Because he’ll kill me too.”
“You nearly killed Nancy.”
“I was supposed to scare her into signing.”
“You hit her with a bat.”
“She told me she knew about my father.”
I paused.
Ryan had never spoken about his father. He claimed the man abandoned his family when he was an infant.
“What did Nancy know?”
“That he worked with your father.”
Ryan’s breathing quickened.
“She said the Black Ledger didn’t expose Belmont. It created Belmont.”
The SUV’s rear door opened.
Beth stepped out.
She was not bound now, but dried blood marked her lip. She held a handgun pointed toward Ryan’s back.
“Drop the transmitter,” she said.
Ryan froze.
“You told me you were tied up.”
“I was.”
“You got Nancy out of the hospital.”
“To keep Pierce from finishing what you started.”
“Then why represent him?” Hall demanded.
Beth’s gun remained steady.
“Because Ryan had to believe I was still useful.”
Ryan laughed bitterly.
“You signed every document.”
“I copied every document.”
“You’re part of this.”
“I was trying to find out who killed my mother.”
The family photograph flashed through my mind. Beth’s mother standing outside the bank with my father, Harper, and Nancy.
Beth looked at me.
“Your mother lied about what happened fifteen years ago. So did mine.”
“Where is Nancy?”
“On the boat, but Pierce moved it before I escaped.”
Ryan raised the brass key.
“He wants this.”
Beth’s face changed.
“No, he wants Kelsey to use it.”
The key was not for the vault.
It was for something connected to me.
Headlights appeared behind us. Three dark vehicles turned into the abandoned bank lot, blocking every exit.
Men in tactical clothing stepped out.
Pierce emerged last.
He held my mother’s shattered gold-rimmed glasses in one hand.
In the other was a tablet displaying Nancy tied inside the boat.
“Bring me the drive,” he said, “or Ryan presses the transmitter.”
Ryan stared at the device in his hand.
“I don’t have a choice.”
Beth moved her gun from Ryan to Pierce.
Pierce smiled.
“You still think you’re the only daughter here.”
Then Nancy lifted her head on the tablet and looked directly into the boat’s camera.
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“Kelsey,” she said, “Beth is your sister.”
📖 Discover why Nancy called Beth my sister—and what Ryan did with the explosive transmitter when CHAPTER 15 began. 👇
