Chapter 110 - The Cellar at Low Water
"The cylinder..." Melissa gasped, her fingers slipping from my wrist as she tried to reach for the metal box instead of the mooring ring. "It’s mine... it was always mine..."
"You fool!" Vance screamed.
Her hand missed the masonry by an inch. The current caught her beneath the arms, snapping my grip like a thread.
"Katherine!"
Melissa’s scream was cut short as the rushing water pulled her under, sweeping her violently across the floor of the vault and dragging her straight toward the gaping black mouth of the broken drainage chute. She surfaced for one split second, her eyes wild, her hands clawing at the churning foam, before the vortex swallowed her entirely, dragging her down into the subterranean river race that emptied miles below Oak Ridge.
"Melissa!" My voice tore through the roaring vault.
Vance lunged forward through the waist-deep water, his arms wrapping around my waist, hauling me back against the granite ledge just as the current tried to take my feet out from beneath me.
"She’s gone, Katherine! She’s gone!" he shouted into my ear, pinning me against the solid masonry.
Julian, shivering violently on the higher stone bench, pointed with a trembling hand toward the ceiling. "The emergency manual override... on the north wall! The red lever! It drops the exterior timber gates!"
Vance didn't hesitate. Bracing himself against the wall, he waded through the raging torrent toward the rusted lever bolted to the basalt pillar. With a brutal downward kick of his heavy boot, he slammed the iron arm down.
Fifty feet above us, the auxiliary timbers dropped into place with a shuddering crash that resonated through the stone.
The roar of the water died instantly to a heavy, gurgling trickle.
The flood began to drain through the lower grates, the water level dropping rapidly from our waists to our knees, leaving the vault littered with mud, river weeds, and dead branches.
I stood there, soaked to the bone, shaking uncontrollably as the silence settled over the room like a shroud. Melissa was gone. Swallowed by the very river Arthur had harnessed to build the Van Der Bilt empire.
Vance waded back to me, his face grim, his hands checking my arms for injuries. "Are you alright?"
I couldn't speak. I could only look at the open cavity in the wall beneath the surveyor's mark.
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The brass key was still turned in the lock. The iron plate had swung open on rusted pivots, revealing the sealed lead cylinder resting on a bed of dry, century-old straw that had miraculously remained untouched by the floodwaters.
"Open it, Katherine," Julian whispered from the shadows, his voice barely a breath. "Before the state troopers arrive. Open it and see what your family was built upon."
