Chapter 13 - BURIED ALIVE
Steel panels closed over the chamber entrance.
Water began pouring through two pipes near the floor.
Dana tried her radio.
The signal was dead.
Lucas sobbed.
“He said he would kill Sophie if I didn’t help.”
“So she is alive?”
“Yes. He has her at the old pumping station.”
I cut his restraints.
“You helped send me to prison.”
“I know.”
“You buried evidence.”
“Reagan paid my debts.”
“And now you want me to save your daughter.”
His face crumpled.
“She’s innocent.”
That was the difference between us.
Reagan and Carter punished innocent people for the sins of others. I refused to become them.
The water reached my knees.
I searched the chamber walls. The burial vault had an old maintenance drain, but Carter had sealed it with concrete.
Dana fired twice at one pipe. The metal cracked, redirecting some of the flow.
“It buys us ten minutes,” she said.
Lucas pointed toward the speaker wire.
“The cable must go outside.”
I pulled it from the wall, revealing a narrow conduit.
Too small for a person, but large enough to reach the release mechanism with a piece of wire.
Dana removed the underwire from her protective vest. We straightened it, pushed it through the conduit and felt for the latch.
The water reached my chest.
My fingers went numb.
“Left,” Lucas said. “Try left.”
I twisted.
Nothing happened.
Dana took a breath and went underwater to search the floor.
The water reached my chin.
Then the latch clicked.
The steel panel opened three inches before jamming.
We pushed together.
Cold cemetery air rushed inside.
By the time officers pulled us out, Carter had a forty-minute lead.
We raced to the abandoned pumping station beside the river.
Sophie was inside a control room, tied to a chair surrounded by containers of gasoline.
Carter stood on the upper walkway with a flare in his hand.
The burns covered half his face.
“Look at us,” he said. “The innocent son, the guilty son and the father who failed both.”
My father appeared on a monitor behind him.
Carter had hacked the rehabilitation center’s security feed. Dad was still safe, but he could see everything.
“Let Sophie go,” I said.
“Give me the trust code.”
“I don’t have it.”
Camden’s voice came through the monitor.
“I do.”
“Dad, don’t.”
“The code is Amelia’s date of death,” he said.
Carter entered it on a laptop.
ACCESS DENIED.
His expression changed.
My father leaned toward the camera.
“Amelia’s death was the worst day of my life. But the account belongs to Finnley, and his life did not end when hers did.”
Carter raised the flare.
“If I don’t get the money, no one leaves.”
Sophie kicked the gasoline container beside her. It rolled away from the chair.
May you like
I ran toward her.
Carter dropped the flare.
