Chapter 18 - The Devil’s Ledger
The assassin’s scream was inhuman, a sound of unimaginable agony as the chemical flame melted skin, muscle, and bone in seconds.
His grip on Claire's throat slackened. Claire dropped to the deck, gasping for air, her lungs burning as she dragged oxygen into her bruised throat.
The assassin, engulfed in screaming agony, stumbled backward blindly against the ship's safety rail. The rusted metal gave way under his massive weight, and he plummeted thirty feet downward into the churning, black vortex of the Hudson River between the ship's hull and the concrete pier, vanishing instantly beneath the icy, merciless water.
Claire didn't watch him sink. She picked up his dropped submachine gun, racked the bolt, and kicked open the heavy watertight door leading into the captain’s stateroom.
Lucian Cross was inside, desperately shoving hard drives and stacks of bearer bonds into a titanium briefcase.
When the door slammed against the bulkhead, Cross froze. Slowly, he turned around, raising his hands, his polished smile gone, replaced by the twitching panic of a cornered rat.
"Claire," Cross said, holding up his manicured palms. "Let’s be reasonable. We are both professionals. I am an investor. You are an heiress now. We can make an arrangement."
"Open the release valves on the human trafficking containers downstairs," Claire commanded, keeping the barrel of the MP5 centered directly between his wire-rimmed glasses.
"Done! Immediately!" Cross stammered, pulling a remote key fob from his pocket and hitting the green override button. "The magnetic locks on the crates are disengaged! The local harbor police will find them safe and warm! But Claire... think about the future! The Obsidian Consortium controls ninety percent of the international real estate transactions in North America! If you kill me, you will create a vacuum that will tear Manhattan apart!"
"I don't care about Manhattan," Claire said, stepping forward until the cold muzzle of the weapon was pressed against Cross’s forehead. "I care about my daughter. Where is the master ledger? The one Julianne died for?"
Cross swallowed, his eyes darting to a hidden wall safe behind an oil painting of the 1920s Vance Theater. "It's inside. Digital encryptions, shell company deeds, every dirty politician on our payroll. Take it! Take all two billion dollars! Just let me walk onto a tugboat and leave this country!"
Claire typed the override code Cross nervously blurted out. The heavy safe hissed open, revealing a gold-plated hardware wallet and three thick, leather-bound ledgers signed in original ink by the founders of the Consortium.
Claire took the ledgers and shoved the gold wallet into her pocket.
Then, she looked Cross in the eye.
"You told me that contract breaches carry a liquidation clause," Claire whispered.
Cross's face went white. "Wait—Claire, please—!"
Claire didn't shoot him. Instead, she swung the heavy butt of the submachine gun into Cross’s temple with bone-shattering force, knocking him unconscious onto the floor.
She pulled out her phone and dialed the direct private line of the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Anti-Corruption Division.
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"Agent Miller," Claire said calmly into the phone as the blare of police sirens surrounded Pier 88. "This is Claire Vance. I have the entire Obsidian Consortium ledger, two billion dollars in illegal assets, and the chairman of the syndicate hog-tied in the captain’s quarters of Pier 88. Come pick up your trash."
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