Chapter 22 - The Ghost of the Marriage
The guard grabbed me by the collar of my rain-soaked jacket, hauling me backward off the stretcher. I clawed at his hands, kicking frantically, but his grip was unyielding.
"Julian, look at her!" I screamed, pointing at the monitor strapped to Emma’s gurney. The digital pulse oximeter was beeping erratically, the reading flashing 84%—dangerously, fatally low for a child with Emma’s pulmonary vascular defect. "She’s in an acute crisis! She needs her specialized nebulizer and the high-concentration nitric mixture, not a maritime transport in a gale! You’re going to kill her!"
Julian didn't even look at the monitor. He checked his gold watch, pulling his coat collar tight against the driving sleet. "The onboard medic has standard albuterol. It will suffice until we clear international boundaries."
"Albuterol causes tachycardia with her condition! You know this—it’s in every pediatric chart from the day she was born!"
"She'll survive the voyage," Julian said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Cast off, now."
"She won't survive forty minutes without the compound Chloe stole from her room!" My voice tore through the wind, catching the medic's attention.
The woman in scrubs paused, her hand hovering over the saline line. She looked from the flashing monitor to Julian, her face blanching under the red strobe. "Mr. Vance... if the child has secondary pulmonary hypertension, standard bronchodilators can cause right-ventricular failure. The medical history you provided didn't mention—"
"You are being paid fifty thousand dollars to monitor that IV line, Nurse," Julian snapped, his eyes flashing with sudden rage. "Keep your mouth shut and board the vessel."
"No," the medic said, stepping back onto the pier and letting go of the pole. "I am licensed in Massachusetts. I am not catching an accessory-to-manslaughter charge for an offshore LLC."
"Get back here, you idiot!" Julian lunged toward her, but the distraction was all I needed.
I drove my heel down onto the guard's instep. He grunted in pain, his fingers loosening on my coat. I twisted out of his grip, spun around, and grabbed the heavy marine-grade fire extinguisher mounted to the outer bulkhead of the salon.
With one fluid motion born of pure adrenaline, I swung the heavy steel cylinder into the guard's midsection, knocking him off-balance. He stumbled, catching his hip on the gunwale before splashing heavily into the black water between the boat and the dock pilings.
Julian turned, his eyes wide with shock, but before he could move, I had the heavy brass nozzle of the extinguisher pointed directly at his chest.
"Touch my daughter again, Julian, and I will crack your skull wide open," I said, my voice dead, flat, and hollow. The tremor in my hands had vanished. The cold didn't exist. There was only the boy I had once loved who had turned into a monster, and the child breathing shallowly on the stretcher between us.
"You're unhinged, Lauren," Julian sneered, though he took a cautious half-step back against the bridge rail. "You always were. Thomas saw it. Eleanor saw it. You think you're righteous because you canceled an engagement party? Because you humiliated Chloe in front of Portland’s high society? You haven't seen the board resolutions."
"I saw everything I needed to see in Zurich," a new voice called out from the dark shoreline.
Julian’s head whipped around.
Walking down the wooden dock through the rain, illuminated by the headlights of a black SUV that had just pulled up onto the gravel path, was Maya. She was soaked through, her trench coat splattered with mud, carrying a thick leather legal folio tucked under her arm. Beside her walked two uniformed Maine State Troopers, their hands resting on their sidearms.
"The Cumberland County ex-parte order was vacated thirty-five minutes ago, Julian," Maya shouted over the roar of the wind, her voice steady and ringing with absolute legal authority. "Judge Henderson didn't take kindly to finding out you filed the emergency petition using a forged medical signature from a doctor who had his license revoked in New Hampshire three months ago."
Julian’s skin seemed to turn translucent beneath the deck lights. "That’s an administrative error. I am her biological father—"
"And you are also under active indictment by the Southern District of New York," Maya continued, stopping at the foot of the gangway while the two state troopers stepped onto the boat. "The offshore LLC you used to charter this vessel out of Boston wasn't leased under your name. It was leased using Eleanor’s family foundation account. An account that was frozen at 7:00 PM tonight under the federal wire fraud statute."
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Maya looked at me, a fierce, triumphant light in her dark eyes. "He didn't come here to save his margin accounts, Lauren. Julian’s firm collapsed yesterday morning. The SEC issued a warrant for his surrender at noon. He’s running from a twenty-year sentence. Emma isn't an inheritance to him. She’s a human shield."
***
