Chapter 38 - FATHER’S GAMBIT
"Kill him!" Grace shrieked, losing every shred of her polished composure. Her face contorted into a mask of pure demonic rage. "Shoot him! Put a bullet in his head!"
The two private sentries advanced from the wings, raising their automatic rifles.
Daniel didn't run. He didn't dive for cover. He sprinted straight toward the piano, placing his battered, bleeding body directly between the guards' gun barrels and his daughter.
"Lily, look at me!" Daniel yelled, grabbing the edge of the grand piano. "Remember Vermont! Remember the lake! The song we sang when the lightning came! It wasn't Brahms, Lily! It wasn't Grace's song!"
Lily’s hands froze an inch above the ivory keys. A violent tremor swept through her small frame. Her eyes flickered, the glassy, deadened stare fracturing like thin ice under pressure.
"Daddy...?" she whispered, her real voice—the tiny, frightened, seven-year-old voice—breaking through the chemical fog.
"Shoot him, you fools!" Grace screamed, drawing a small, pearl-handled Derringer pistol from her evening purse.
*BOOM!*
The reinforced blast-glass ceiling of the concert hall exploded inward in a shower of ten thousand razor-sharp crystalline fragments.
Two flashbang grenades plummeted through the shattered roof, detonating with a deafening roar and a blinding, white-hot flash. The security guards were thrown backward, screaming, clutching their ruined eyes and ears.
Through the smoke and the falling glass, four black-clad HRT operators descended on tactical ropes, their carbines barking in short, disciplined, lethal bursts.
*Crack-crack-crack!*
Grace’s private mercenaries dropped to the marble floor before they could raise their weapons.
"Federal agents! On the ground! Drop your weapons!"
Miller’s voice echoed through the chaos as the detective, his arm still in a sling, dropped from a lower landing onto the perimeter, holding his Glock in a firm, one-handed grip.
"Miller!" Daniel yelled, lunging forward and sweeping Lily off the piano bench into his arms.
"I told you I’d follow you to the gates of hell, Daniel!" Miller shouted over the gunfire, advancing toward the stage.
Grace retreated into the shadows of the backstage tunnel, firing two wild shots from her Derringer. One slug sparked off the metal frame of the Steinway piano, inches from Daniel’s ear.
"She’s getting away!" Miller yelled, moving to pursue, but a secondary explosion rocked the lower foundation of the citadel.
Sirens began to wail with an ear-splitting, apocalyptic shriek. Automated red emergency lights bathed the entire hall in blood-colored strobe flashes.
*“CRITICAL STRUCTURAL FAILURE,”* the automated facility voice announced over the sirens. *“SEAWALL BREACH DETECTED. LOWER SECTORS FLOODING IN SIXTY SECONDS.”*
A torrent of black seawater, cold as death, burst through the service corridors, tearing through the reinforced bulkheads like paper.
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"Daniel! Move!" Miller roared. "The whole damn island is going under!"
***
