Chapter 10 - Into the Subterranean Dark
Bram let out a sharp cry of surprise as his legs buckled beneath him, the heavy gold-encased smartphone flying out of his hand in a high arc across the damp concrete.
"Now!" I screamed, closing the distance in three long strides.
Agent Vance dove toward the tumbling phone, sliding across the wet pavement and snatching the device out of the air just as the countdown timer hit 03:15. With rapid, frantic keystrokes, Vance punched in his master NCIS biometric override code, killing the automated transmission script a mere ten seconds before expiration.
Meanwhile, Bram scrambled wildly across the gravel, striking out blindly at Delphine as she pinned his right arm against the ground. "Get off me, you stupid bitch!" he snarled, backhanding her across the cheek with enough force to send her sprawling.
Before Bram could push himself back to his feet, I reached him, holstering my sidearm and driving my boot down hard across his wrist, pinning him to the earth with all the weight and fury I had bottled up through a lifetime of his manipulation and my sister's misplaced loyalty.
"It's over, Bram," I breathed, hauling him up by his expensive silk lapels and slamming him face-first against the side of his own catering van. "The game is finished."
Sirens wailed in the distance as three reinforced military police cruisers finally swarmed around the corner of the warehouse, their floodlights blindingly bright against the gray morning sky.
Agent Vance walked over, holding up the secured phone with a relieved sigh, while Master Chief Kettleman stepped out of the lead cruiser, his rifle at the ready.
"Secure the perimeter!" Kettleman bellowed to the arriving troops. "Get medical over here for Miss Vance!"
I let go of Bram’s jacket, watching as the military police forced him into handcuffs and shoved him into the back of a patrol cruiser. He didn't fight back anymore. His expression had turned hollow, defeated by the sudden, unpredictable variable he had failed to account for: the woman he thought he had completely controlled.
I turned around and walked slowly over to where Delphine was sitting on the bumper of the ruined van, holding a cold compress against her bruised cheek. Her shoulders were shaking, not with anger, but with the quiet, shuddering realization of everything she had almost destroyed.
I stopped a few feet away, looking down at her the exact same way I had looked at her on the pier hours earlier.
She looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with a profound, unarticulated remorse she had never shown me in thirty-seven years.
"Marlo..." she whispered, her voice cracking. "I'm... I'm so sorry."
Before I could answer, a sharp, metallic sound echoed from the dark, cavernous mouth of the abandoned rail tunnel behind us.
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We all froze.
From the pitch-black depths of the subterranean freight shaft, the low, steady rumble of a heavy diesel engine began to echo against the concrete walls—and the twin high-beam headlights of an unmanifested freight locomotive slowly flickered to life in the dark.
