Chapter 7 - The Descent At Devil’s Bluff
The mud dragged at Sarah’s boots with every panicked stride.
She clutched her heavy leather bag against her ribs with one arm, while her right hand squeezed the freezing grip of the Colt pistol.
Behind her, through the driving wall of coastal rain, the beam of industrial tactical flashlights swept across the weathered cemetery monuments.
She heard the heavy crunch of gravel under steel-toed soles.
Two voices called out across the darkness, their words low, professional, and entirely devoid of panic.
“Vehicle is parked on the north shoulder.”
“The engine block is still warm.”
“She’s up by the family enclosure.”
Sarah did not turn her head to look.
She remembered her mother’s voice from childhood: When fear comes, Julianne, look only at the next three feet in front of your toes.
She plunged into the dense thicket of blackberry brambles behind Saint Jude’s stone chapel.
The thorns tore through her black wool coat and raked across her wrists, leaving stinging lines of fire on her flesh.
She ignored the pain, pushing through the brush until the ground suddenly dropped away beneath her feet.
Devil’s Bluff.
Eighty feet below lay the roaring, black churn of the Atlantic Ocean, crashing violently against jagged granite boulders.
The salt spray rose in thick plumes, blinding her eyes and soaking her hair.
She dropped to her knees at the edge of the cliff, sweeping her hand through the wet weeds until her knuckles struck cold iron.
The old maintenance ladder.
It had been bolted to the cliff face sixty years ago by the Coast Guard to service an abandoned foghorn station.
The iron rungs were thick with orange rust and slick green sea moss.
A sudden, sharp crack echoed from the top of the cemetery ridge behind her.
It was not thunder.
It was the unmistakable, bone-snapping report of a high-caliber firearm echoing off the stone walls of the mausoleum.
A split second later, a second shot rang out, followed by a hoarse shout in the fog.
Arthur.
Sarah’s heart seized with excruciating grief, but she remembered the iron command in his voice.
Run, Julianne.
She slung the heavy leather shoulder bag across her torso, ensuring the strap rested diagonally over her chest.
She shoved the heavy pistol into her deep coat pocket.
Then she swung her legs over the precipice, her boots searching blindly for the first iron rung.
Her sole slipped on the wet seaweed, and for a terrifying second, her weight hung solely from her two bare hands.
Her fingernails tore into the mud and rusted bolts.
She gasped, pulling her torso inward against the rock, and found a foothold four inches lower.
Step by step, she began her agonizing descent into the abyss.
Every ten feet, the iron frame groaned under her weight, sending flakes of rust fluttering down into the darkness.
Above her on the crest of the bluff, the beam of a flashlight pierced the mist, sweeping over the edge of the cliff.
Sarah pressed her face flat against the wet granite rock face, holding her breath until her lungs burned.
The beam lingered on the rusted iron rungs just twelve inches above her head.
A voice called down through the wind, cold and calculated.
“She went down the maintenance line.”
“Cut the anchors.”
Sarah’s eyes snapped wide in horror.
Before she could process the command, a heavy iron crowbar smashed into the upper concrete stanchions holding the ladder to the rock.
A metallic shriek pierced the night as the top four feet of the iron ladder sheared away from the cliff.
The entire structure buckled violently, dropping six feet in a sudden, stomach-churning free fall.
Sarah let out a muffled scream as her hands were nearly torn from the bars.
She slammed against the wet granite face, the sharp rock slicing through the fabric of her coat at her hip.
The ladder was swaying wildly over the churning water like a broken pendulum.
She looked down.
The black surf was twenty feet below, swirling around a narrow shelf of flat shale.
Another heavy blow struck the anchors above.
The top bolts surrendered with an ear-splitting snap.
Knowing the frame was about to collapse entirely, Sarah let go of the rungs and pushed herself backward away from the rock wall.
For one breathless moment, she was suspended in the howling void of the Atlantic storm.
Then she plunged feet-first into the freezing ocean.
The shock of the icy water knocked the remaining air from her lungs, driving her deep into the swirling black current.
The weight of the heavy leather bag and her wet overcoat threatened to drag her straight down toward the rocky seabed.
Survival instinct overrode the paralyzing terror.
She kicked frantically with both legs, clawing at the saltwater until her head broke the surface of the foam.
She choked on brine, coughing violently as the undertow slammed her body against the flat shale ledge Arthur had described.
Her hands found purchase in a cleft of rock.
She hauled herself out of the surf on her elbows and knees, gasping for air, her clothes dripping freezing water.
She checked her bag with wild panic.
The waterproof wax lining had held.
The black ledger was damp at the edges, but the pages remained intact inside the thick leather binding.
She looked up at the towering cliff above.
The broken remnants of the iron ladder hung uselessly in the darkness, twisting in the coastal gale.
A flashlight beam danced harmlessly across the foaming water forty feet to her left.
They could not climb down without climbing gear.
And they would assume no human being could survive an eighty-foot plunge into the rocky Atlantic breakers at midnight.
Sarah crawled along the narrow shelf of rock until she reached a natural fissure in the sea wall.
The fissure opened into an old storm-drainage culvert that ran beneath the coastal highway.
She dragged herself inside the concrete pipe, shivering so violently her teeth clicked together like dice in a cup.
She pulled out her phone.
The screen was dead, permanently ruined by the saltwater plunge.
She was sixty miles from Boston Logan Airport.
Her vehicle was impounded or destroyed by Marcus Reed’s hitmen.
She had sixty thousand dollars in waterlogged cash, an unloaded pistol with no spare clip, and five hours before Flight 442 touched down at dawn.
Sarah leaned her head against the cold concrete of the culvert wall and closed her eyes.
For twenty-seven years, she had been a gentle, obedient daughter who avoided conflict at all costs.
That woman had died in the sanctuary of the church beside Margaret’s casket.
The woman shivering in the storm drain had a name she had never spoken aloud until tonight.
May you like
“Julianne,” she whispered into the dark concrete pipe.
And Julianne Bennett was going to meet her father at the gate.
