Chapter 24 - The Lily in the Coffin
The rain over the Hudson River fell like sheets of gray lead.
Chelsea Piers rose out of the mist like an industrial fortress, the halogen harbor lamps casting eerie yellow circles across the oily, churning water.
Julian drove the SUV straight through the security barrier at Pier 59.
The security guard inside the gatehouse barely had time to shout before the SUV roared past, tires screeching against wet asphalt.
Slip forty-two sat at the very end of the longest dock.
Moored to the massive concrete pylons was *The Sovereign Sea*—Victoria Vance’s one-hundred-and-sixty-foot custom tri-deck yacht.
The vessel looked desolate, dark, and ghostly in the storm.
Yellow police caution tape was wrapped around the boarding ramp, fluttering violently in the gale-force wind.
Federal seizure notices were laminated and stapled to the main gangway doors.
Julian cut the SUV's engine, killing the headlights.
Through the rain-streaked windshield, Maya saw it immediately.
Sitting at the foot of the yacht’s boarding ladder, drenched in the downpour, was a massive wooden shipping crate surrounded by five dozen pristine white lilies.
The flowers lay scattered across the wet deck planks like fallen snow on a battlefield.
"Stay in the car," Julian said, his hand reaching for the door handle.
"I'm not staying in the car, Julian," Maya snapped, pulling her hood up. "This started with me in that water. I'm finishing it."
They stepped out into the howling storm together, the wind whipping salt spray into their faces.
Every step down the wooden dock brought back the suffocating terror of that wedding night.
The memory of Victoria’s cold, manic eyes.
The brutal shove against Maya’s shoulders.
The sickening plunge into the black, freezing Atlantic while her silk wedding gown dragged her toward the bottom.
And then the nightmare at the ladder—Victoria standing above with the iron boat hook, waiting to crush her fingers if she tried to climb back up.
Maya’s legs felt like lead, but she forced herself forward until she stood before the shipping crate.
The crate was long, narrow, and made of unfinished pine.
It looked unmistakably like a coffin.
A heavy crowbar was jammed into the top seam of the lid, left behind as an invitation.
Julian grabbed the crowbar, his muscles straining as he levered the pine boards upward.
*Screeech!*
The rusty nails screamed as they pulled free from the wood.
Julian ripped the lid off and threw it onto the dock.
Maya braced herself, expecting to see a corpse.
Instead, the crate was packed with layers of dry ice, emitting thick, cold vapor into the wet air.
Nestled inside the dry ice was a sleek, stainless steel medical lockbox and a small tablet computer plugged into a portable battery pack.
The screen of the tablet suddenly flickered to life.
A prerecorded video began to play automatically.
On the screen was not Victoria Vance.
It was a young woman in her late twenties, sitting in a sterile white room.
She had Maya’s high cheekbones, Maya’s wide, almond-shaped brown eyes, but her hair was a stark, bleached platinum blonde.
Across her neck was a long, jagged scar that disappeared into her collarbone—the mark of an old, traumatic tracheostomy.
It was Clara.
*"Hello, little sister,"* Clara said on the video, her voice carrying that same raspy, mechanical breathiness Maya had heard over the telephone.
Maya gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.
Julian leaned closer to the screen, his chest heaving. "Clara..."
*"If you’re watching this, Maya, then you survived our mother's favorite trick,"* Clara whispered, offering a cold, mirthless smile. *"Mother pushed you off the yacht just like she pushed me off the cliffs in Montauk twenty years ago. The only difference is, our father died trying to save me. Nobody died saving you."*
Clara paused, leaning toward the camera, her eyes burning with an unsettling, feverish intensity.
*"Julian thinks Victoria escaped Bellevue yesterday,"* Clara continued, laughing softly. *"Julian is such an obedient, foolish boy. Victoria didn't escape. I paid five hundred thousand dollars from our mother's Swiss vault to have her private physician walk her out of that hospital in a nurse's uniform."*
Julian let out an animalistic groan of rage. "She took Victoria!"
*"Mother is currently sleeping peacefully on board her beloved yacht,"* Clara whispered through the screen. *"Right below your feet, in the master stateroom where she used to count her money. The Coast Guard seals have already been broken. The keys to the stateroom are inside that steel medical box."*
Clara’s face darkened on the screen, the smile vanishing completely.
*"You have five minutes to board the ship, Maya. Come alone. If Julian steps foot onto that deck, the remote detonator attached to the auxiliary fuel tanks will ignite. All forty thousand gallons of marine diesel."*
The screen flashed bright red.
A digital countdown timer appeared on the display:
*04:59... 04:58... 04:57...*
"Maya, no!" Julian shouted, grabbing her shoulders. "It's a trap! She wants to blow the ship with both of us on it!"
"She wants Victoria, Julian!" Maya yelled over the roar of the wind. "And she wants me to watch!"
Maya snatched the stainless steel lockbox from the dry ice, popped the latches, and pulled out a heavy brass master key.
She looked Julian straight in the eyes.
"If the counter hits zero, you run," Maya said fiercely.
"I’m not letting you go back on that boat!" Julian begged, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks.
"I spent my entire life being an innocent bystander in your family's war," Maya said, breaking free from his grip. "Not tonight."
May you like
Maya ducked beneath the yellow police tape, climbed the wet metal gangway, and stepped back aboard the ghost ship that had tried to swallow her whole.
***
