The Sealed Envelope And The Missing Wife At The Billionaire Wedding
CHAPTER 6: THE FOG OVER GLOUCESTER WHARF
The gunshot tore through the screech of the nor’easter like a crack of thunder, the 9mm round chewing into the front fender of Detective Cruz’s cruiser with a loud metallic strike that threw sparks into the freezing rain.
“Get down!” Cruz shouted, grabbing Celine by the shoulder and pulling her behind the reinforced engine block of the police vehicle.
Across the wooden pier apron, the two private security contractors were in full retreat. One of them, a heavy-set man wearing a black knit cap, was firing suppressive rounds toward the police car while his partner frantically hauled an aluminum medical transport gurney out of the rear of the ambulance, wheeling it toward the open boarding gangway of the Valkyrie II.
On the gurney, strapped down with heavy orange nylon restraints, lay a woman.
She wore a thin, faded green hospital smock from Massachusetts General Hospital, her pale arms bruised and bare against the freezing rain, her dark hair whipped wildly across her face by the ocean gale. Despite her physical weakness and the IV catheters torn from her forearms, she was fighting with desperate, animal ferocity, thrashing her body against the restraints, kicking her bare feet against the gurney frame to prevent them from rolling her onto the yacht.
“Mara!” Celine yelled, her voice piercing the roar of the wind and the marine diesels.
The woman on the gurney froze. Her dark eyes, luminous and wide with terror, searched through the swirling fog until they locked onto Celine Vance standing behind the police car in her white wedding gown and dark police jacket.
“Celine…!” Mara screamed, her voice hoarse and raw. “Don’t let them take me! The boat… the boat has no flag… they’ll drown me in the channel!”
The armed contractor fired another round, the bullet shattering the cruiser’s side mirror. “Cast off the lines!” he yelled toward the yacht’s wheelhouse. “Cast off or we’re all going to state prison!”
From the bridge of the Valkyrie II, the heavy electronic throttle levers were slammed forward. The twin MTU diesels roared with a deafening, throaty rumble, the massive bronze propellers churning the black harbor water into boiling white froth as the yacht began to surge forward, straining against its single remaining bow line.
Cruz did not hesitate. He leaned across the hood of the cruiser, leveled his Glock 17 with both hands, and fired three steady, deliberate rounds into the yacht’s starboard engine air intake vent.
The high-performance marine turbine sputtered with a loud, violent backfire, dense black smoke billowing from the exhaust port as the engine seized in a metallic screech.
“Move! Flank the gangway!” Cruz shouted, sprinting across the rain-slicked wooden timbers, his service weapon covering the contractor at the gurney. “Drop the weapon! Hands in the air right now!”
The armed contractor turned, raising his pistol toward Cruz.
Before the contractor could align his sights, Celine Vance made her move.
Drawing upon forty years of family dockside instinct, Celine seized a heavy, rusted three-foot iron mooring pike resting against the ice house wall. With all the athletic strength in her tall frame, Celine swung the iron bar in a sweeping, devastating horizontal arc.
The heavy iron bar struck the contractor’s right wrist with a concussive crack.
The man cried out in agony, his pistol flying twenty feet through the air and splashing harmlessly into the thirty-foot depths of Gloucester Harbor. The second contractor, seeing his partner disarmed and hearing the wailing sirens of four approaching State Police tactical cruisers rocketing down Commercial Street, threw his hands into the air and dropped to his knees on the wet pier.
Cruz drove his knee into the fallen gunman’s back, pinning him to the wooden decking, while Celine dropped the iron bar and threw herself onto the medical gurney.
“I have you! I have you, Mara!” Celine wept, her hands flying to the heavy nylon buckles, ripping the restraints free from Mara’s chest and arms.
Mara surged upward into Celine’s arms, throwing her bruised, shivering arms around Celine’s neck. The woman was sobbing uncontrollably, her body trembling with hypothermia and terror, her tears washing through the freezing sea spray on Celine’s cheek.
“You came…” Mara wept, burying her face in the white satin of Celine’s wedding dress. “You came for me… Damien said you would let me die…”
“Damien is in handcuffs at the altar in Boston, Mara,” Celine whispered fiercely, wrapping her heavy police windbreaker around Mara’s shivering shoulders, holding the woman against her chest with an unyielding, protective strength. “The wedding is over. The merger is shredded. You are safe. You are never going to be in the dark again.”
At the end of the pier, four Massachusetts State Police tactical vehicles screeched to a halt, their blue and red strobes illuminating the black water and the crippled yacht. Armed tactical officers swarmed the deck of the Valkyrie II, taking the captain and the remaining crew into federal custody.
Mara looked up into Celine’s eyes, her trembling fingers reaching out to touch Celine’s face.
“Celine…” Mara whispered, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. “The flower basket… did Elara give you the basket?”
“Yes, Mara. Elara is safe in Boston with Anna and my father.”
Mara reached into the pocket of her hospital smock, pulling out a small, titanium cryptographic security key tagged with a red label. “The real corporate archives… the ones Damien used to blackmail the European maritime ministers… they aren’t on the company servers. They’re stored on the satellite drive hidden in Elara’s basket. Damien doesn’t just lose his freedom tonight, Celine. He loses every ship he ever stole.”
