Chapter 6: The Burning Shipyard
I signed the statement.
Arthur looked surprised.
Grant stared at me in disbelief.
“Celeste, don’t.”
I placed the pen down.
“You have what you wanted. Release him.”
Arthur handed the document to Mercer.
Mercer read it carefully.
Then he smiled.
“You were always the practical one.”
“No,” Arthur said. “She was always weak.”
He moved toward Grant.
That was when I struck.
The pen was not an ordinary pen.
Elena had replaced it with a ceramic blade capable of slipping through a standard security scan.
I drove it into the cable holding Grant’s chair to the floor, then kicked the table toward Mercer.
His pistol fired.
The bullet shattered the window.
Grant threw himself sideways.
I grabbed the flash drive as Arthur stumbled backward.
Mercer recovered quickly and fired again.
The bullet tore through my sleeve.
I pulled Grant behind a steel desk.
Outside, alarms began screaming.
Arthur’s men had discovered federal agents approaching the perimeter.
Mercer cursed and ran toward the rear exit.
Arthur seized a fuel canister from the corner.
“What are you doing?” Grant shouted.
“Protecting the family.”
Arthur poured fuel across the floor.
Then he dropped a lighter.
Flames raced through the operations building.
The fire spread faster than it should have.
Arthur had planned to burn the shipyard from the beginning.
He escaped through a side door while Grant and I remained trapped behind the flames.
Smoke filled the room.
The heat struck my scars.
For one terrible second, I was back inside the Black Meridian.
Metal screaming.
Men shouting.
A collapsing bulkhead glowing white with heat.
My body remembered the pain before my mind did.
I froze.
“Celeste!” Grant shouted.
The ceiling began to collapse.
I forced myself to move.
We crawled toward the shattered window while fire rolled above us.
Grant climbed through first.
I was halfway out when the roof gave way.
A steel beam struck the floor behind me.
Another trapped my leg.
Grant reached through the window.
“Take my hand!”
The fire climbed closer.
I saw my mother’s flash drive lying just beyond my fingers.
Saving it meant risking my life.
Leaving it meant losing the evidence that could prove Arthur murdered her.
I grabbed the drive.
Then Grant pulled me through the window seconds before the building collapsed.
Federal agents surrounded us.
Mercer had escaped.
Arthur had disappeared.
But the flash drive was intact.
Elena placed it into an evidence bag.
“We’ll open it at headquarters.”
Before she could seal it, the drive’s tiny light blinked.
A hidden program activated.
Files began deleting themselves.
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And the screen displayed a message from my mother:
Celeste, if you are seeing this, Arthur has already found me. Do not trust Admiral Reed.
