Chapter 87 - The Convergence at Mount Washington Cog Base
"Who are you?" I demanded, keeping Lily pinned gently beneath my arm on the floorboard of the truck, my eyes darting between the snowy road ahead and the weathered face of our driver.
"Name's Callahan," the man grunted, keeping his gaze locked on the faint, pale outline of the road markers. "Ran timber and rail logistics for your father for thirty years before Julian decided to turn the family business into a privateering syndicate. I was the one who pulled your father out of the burning wheelhouse off Cape Elizabeth when Julian tried to drown him."
"Where is my father?" The question tore out of me, raw and desperate. "Is he alive?"
Callahan's jaw clenched under his gray beard. "He was alive until six months ago, Claire. His heart gave out in an assisted living facility in Montreal under a false name. But before he died, he told me that one day, Evelyn would break, you would resurface, and Julian would come out of the shadows to sweep up the pieces."
He reached beneath the truck's dashboard and pulled out a heavy twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun, laying it across his knees.
"Where are you taking us?" I asked.
"North Conway. First Commercial Bank," Callahan replied. "You've got the key to Box 404, don't you?"
"I have it," I whispered, touching the brass edge inside my pocket.
"Good. Because that safe doesn't just have papers in it, Claire. It contains the primary optical master key to the Vance maritime network—the biometric override that Julian needs to unlock the automated cargo freighters currently sitting in international waters off Boston Harbor."
Callahan glanced into his rearview mirror.
Two miles behind us, emerging from the snow-choked curve of Route 16, two pairs of high-intensity halogen lights flared into view.
May you like
Black SUVs. Moving at eighty miles an hour, closing the distance rapidly.
"Hold onto something," Callahan said calmly, shifting into fourth gear. "Julian's boys just picked up our tracks."
