Chapter 24 - The River of Cold Blood
My father didn't hesitate. Despite his trembling hands, despite the blood dripping from a gash on his forehead where a bullet ricochet had grazed him, Richard Vance knelt beside me in the mud and the wet concrete.
He placed his thick, scarred palms on the fiber-optic housing.
"I've got it, Danny," Richard whispered, his voice cracking with an emotion he had buried for thirty years. "I've got you. I'm not letting go."
*05:42.*
*05:41.*
My hands were covered in grease, but my touch on the multi-tool was surgical. The bypass wasn't in the electronic board; Arthur was an old-school financier, but his technical contractor was cheap. They had used an off-the-shelf industrial radio receiver integrated with a commercial blasting cap.
"He bridged the ground through the rebar grid," I muttered, my eyes tracing a hairline copper trace hidden beneath a layer of black epoxy. "He didn't just wire the bomb to the pier. He turned the entire steel skeleton of the bridge into an antenna."
"Can you ground it?" Richard asked, his breath ragged, his grip on the optic bridge steady as granite.
"Not from here," I replied, looking toward the main suspension cable anchoring thirty feet out over the empty drop. "I have to sever the primary grounding lug at the shear plate. Out there."
Behind us, a sudden metallic clatter echoed.
I spun around. Arthur had dragged his broken body to the emergency service hoist at the edge of the pier. He had his bloody hand on the lever, his face a pale mask of desperate hatred.
"If I burn, Richard, your legacy burns with me!" Arthur shrieked.
He pulled the lever.
The hoist didn't ascend. Instead, it released the secondary tension winch holding the temporary shoring platform above us. A three-ton steel I-beam swung loose from its rigging, groaning under astronomical tension, sweeping across the pier like a pendulum of death aimed straight for our heads.
"Danny, down!"
Richard didn't think. He didn't calculate. The man who had once valued corporate balance sheets above his own blood threw himself across my back, pinning me against the concrete footing as the massive steel beam tore through the scaffolding overhead.
The impact was deafening. The beam sheared through the timber supports, raining jagged iron bolts and crushed wood down upon us. A savage groan ripped from my father's throat as a flying support brace slammed across his lower back.
Yet, his hands never left the bomb's housing.
*02:15.*
*02:14.*
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"Dad!" I choked out, scrambling out from under him.
"Go..." Richard coughed, dark blood flecking his lips, his eyes burning with a fierce, unbreakable light. "Sever the lug, son. Don't worry about me. Save the bridge. Save our name."
