Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
With a lightning-fast motion, David reached inside my collar, grabbed the audio transmitter wire, and violently ripped it from my chest, discarding it into the dark water between the pier planks.
“Did you really think I wouldn't scan for RF frequencies within a five-hundred-yard radius?” he mocked, his eyes wide with triumphant malice. “Your little friends in the FBI van are deaf now. And before their snipers can clear the fog off this dock…”
He grabbed my wrist, twisting it violently behind my back, using me as a human shield as he dragged me toward the yacht’s gangway.
“Victoria! Start the twin screws! We leave now!”
“Let go of her!” an ancient, furious voice thundered through the fog.
From behind a row of stacked fiberglass storage lockers at the center of the pier emerged Mr. Henderson.
He wasn't wearing a coat. He was holding an old, battered Remington 12-gauge shotgun—the same hunting firearm he had kept locked in his gun cabinet since his days as a federal marshal in the 1980s.
“Henderson?” David barked, letting out a wild, incredulous laugh. “You brought the geriatric gardener to save you? Drop the shotgun, old man, or I blow her head off!”
“I’m not a gardener, Mercer,” Mr. Henderson said calmly, taking two deliberate, heavy steps forward, planting his feet on the wet timber. “I was clearing bank fraud rings when you were still stealing lunch money in elementary school.”
Victoria panicked. “Julian, shoot him! Just shoot him and let's go!”
David raised the suppressed pistol over my shoulder, taking aim at Mr. Henderson’s chest.
In that split second, I didn't think about fear. I didn't think about survival. I thought about Lily’s innocent laughter, her tear-stained face in the hallway, and the seven years of lies this parasite had inflicted upon our lives.
I drove the steel heel of my right boot down onto David’s instep with all eighty pounds of my falling weight.
At the same instant, I threw my head back, slamming the hard bone of my skull directly into his nose.
*CRACK.*
David let out a guttural howl of pain, his nose shattering instantly, blood spurting across his face as he stumbled backward. His gun discharged harmlessly into the wooden deck planks.
“Emily, drop!” Mr. Henderson roared.
I dropped flat against the wet, splintered timber of the pier.
*BOOM!*
The concussive roar of Mr. Henderson’s 12-gauge shattered the morning silence. A heavy load of non-lethal tactical beanbag shot struck David square in the chest with the force of a battering ram, launching him off his feet, crashing violently through the fiberglass salon doors of *The Alibi*.
Victoria shrieked, dropping her designer bag, scrambling toward the yacht’s helm to engage the throttle.
“FBI! NOBODY MOVE!”
The morning fog erupted.
Three tactical assault boats from the New York Harbor Unit cut through the mist, their high-powered spotlights pinning *The Alibi* in blinding white light. Sirens wailed across the water as Agent Briggs and a dozen heavily armed tactical operators in body armor swarmed the docks from both sides.
“Drop your weapon! Hands on your head!”
Victoria froze at the helm, raising her trembling, manicured hands, sobbing hysterically as red laser dots painted her chest.
Inside the shattered salon of the yacht, David groaned, coughing blood, clutching his fractured ribs, crawling desperately toward his dropped firearm.
I stood up from the wet planks.
I didn't run away.
I walked straight onto the deck of that yacht, stepped directly onto his outstretched hand, pinning his fingers against the deck boards, and kicked the pistol into the black water of the river.
David looked up at me through swollen, blackened eyes, blood dripping from his shattered nose. The charming, refined husband was dead. Only a broken, pathetic criminal remained.
“Emily…” he wheezed, his voice pathetic and hollow. “Please… we can split it… think of Lily…”
“Never speak my daughter’s name again,” I whispered.
May you like
Agent Briggs stormed aboard, dropping a heavy knee into David’s back, wrenching his arms behind him, snapping the cold steel handcuffs over his wrists with a definitive, bone-jarring *CLICK.*
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