Chapter 7 - The Blaze on the Pier
"Back up!" Croft yelled, shoving me behind a row of heavy steel filing cabinets.
*FWOOSH.*
A river of orange fire roared beneath the bottom of the roll-up door as Megan dropped a flare. The gasoline-soaked wood floor ignited instantly, sending a wall of black, suffocating smoke rolling up toward the corrugated ceiling.
"She locked the latch from the outside!" Croft coughed, kicking violently against the door. It didn't budge. The reinforced steel was built to withstand hurricane gales.
The heat hit us in a sickening wave. My eyes burned; the air vanished, replaced by thick, toxic plastic fumes from the burning storage tubs.
"The sea wall!" I screamed through my sleeve, pointing to the back of the locker.
The back wall wasn't steel—it was old, salt-rotted cedar planking overlooking the freezing drop to the harbor below.
Croft didn't hesitate. He took the crowbar, swung it with every ounce of his weight, and smashed through the rotten boards. Wood splintered. A blast of freezing North Atlantic air poured in, fighting the smoke.
"Go, Clara! Through the hole!"
"I can't jump into the ocean! The baby—"
"There's a service float two feet down!" Croft barked. "Climb!"
I squeezed through the splintered gap, my boots finding the icy wooden ladder anchored to the pier pilings. Below me, black water churned against the mossy timbers. The cold tore through my clothes like needles, but I scrambled down onto the floating dock just as the storage locker above us blew out in a violent fireball of shattering glass and flying embers.
Croft dropped down beside me, coughing violently, clutching Arthur’s journal tight to his chest inside his jacket.
Up on the pier above, Megan stood under the halo of a sodium vapor light, watching the flames roar into the night sky. She had her phone out, recording the blaze.
She thought we were inside.
"Look at her," I whispered, the Glock shaking in my hand. "Look at that monster."
"Don't shoot," Croft murmured, catching my wrist. "If you kill her now, Julian stays in a cage forever. We let her think we're dead. The preliminary hearing is in two hours."
"She thinks she won," I said, tasting soot and salt on my lips.
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"Let her think it," Croft said grimly, pulling me toward the ramp leading to the public marina. "Because when a snake thinks it's alone in the grass, that’s when it exposes its neck."
***
