Chapter 7 - The Sea of Ash
The descent through the vertical shaft ended in waist-deep, freezing seawater. Alexander caught Clara by the waist as she slipped on the moss-covered rocks, helping her steady Lily, who was wrapped in waterproof canvas.
The underground cave echoed with the roar of the Atlantic tide smashing against jagged stone. Ahead lay the faint outline of a high-speed zodiac boat moored to an old smuggling pier.
""Julian has boats patrolling the shoreline,"" Clara warned, coughing slightly from the residual gas in her lungs. ""We can't just cruise out into the bay.""
""We aren't going to the bay,"" Alexander said grimly, unlocking the boat's fuel line. ""We're going into the reef.""
He started the twin outboard engines. The roar of the motors triggered instant searchlights sweeping down from the clifftop estate above. Red tracer rounds rained from the rocks, splashing into the foam around them like fiery hail.
Alexander shoved the throttle forward. The zodiac leaped over the black waves, cutting through the chop at terrifying speed. Clara hunkered down in the center, shielding Lily with her own body while returning fire toward the clifftop with her pistol, forcing the snipers to take cover.
""Hold on!"" Alexander shouted over the roar of the sea.
A massive searchlight mounted on a Thorne Syndicate patrol cutter cut through the fog directly ahead of them, blinding their vision. A loudspeaker boomed over the waves: Cut your engines, Vance! You have nowhere to run!
""Alexander, we're boxed in!"" Clara yelled, pointing behind them where two jet skis were closing in fast.
Alexander didn't slow down. Instead, he gripped the wheel with white knuckles and aimed straight for the jagged teeth of the Devil's Teeth reef—a nautical graveyard where no captain dared enter at night.
""Hang onto the floor!"" he roared.
The boat skimmed over a cresting swell, sailing through a razor-thin gap between two towering rocks. Behind them, one of the pursuing jet skis misjudged the swell and detonated violently against the granite wall.
May you like
Yet as Alexander cleared the reef into the open ocean, the engine choked, sputtered, and died. A sniper’s bullet had severed the fuel manifold.
They were drifting helplessly in the storm, twenty miles from shore, with Julian Thorne’s cutter turning around to finish them.
