Chapter 43 - The Cold Shore
Eleanor threw the boat into reverse, sliding the stern toward the beacon with surgical precision. Sophia grabbed the aluminum boat hook from the gunwale while I threw off my soaked jacket and leaned over the transom, heedless of the freezing spray numbing my skin.
"Grab his collar!" Sophia cried, snagging the heavy ballistic nylon of the vest with the hook.
I plunged my arms into the lake. The cold hit me like liquid knives, driving all the air from my lungs, but my fingers locked around the heavy tactical strap across Julian’s chest. Sophia caught his other shoulder, and with a guttural scream of pure adrenaline, Eleanor abandoned the helm to throw her weight into the effort. Together, we hauled Julian’s limp, waterlogged body over the gunwale and onto the rubberized floor of the cockpit.
He wasn't breathing.
His skin was the color of curdled milk, his lips stained a bruised, necrotic blue. Blood oozed sluggishly from a deep laceration across his right temple where the collapsing stone had grazed his skull.
"Turn him over! Clear his airway!" Eleanor commanded, dropping to her knees beside him and tearing open his tactical jacket.
Sophia turned his head while I locked my hands over the center of his chest, throwing my entire body weight into brutal, rhythmic compressions. "Don't you dare die," I sobbed, pressing down until I felt the resistance of his ribs. "Julian! Don't you dare leave me with this mess!"
One. Two. Three. Four.
Eleanor pinched his nose and delivered two sharp breaths into his mouth.
I compressed again. Five. Six. Seven.
On the twentieth compression, Julian’s chest spasmed violently. A torrent of brackish lake water erupted from his lungs, spluttering across the deck as he curled onto his side, coughing until he dry-heaved, his bloodshot eyes fluttering half-open in absolute disorientation.
"Clara..." his voice was a ruined whisper, scraped raw by cold water and shock.
"I'm here," I choked out, pressing my forehead against his wet shoulder, feeling the ragged rise and fall of his breathing. "You're on the boat. We got you."
Julian weakly reached down to his right tactical pouch, his shivering fingers feeling the empty torn pocket where the secondary drive had been lodged. His jaw tightened in agonized frustration. "He... took it. David took the ledger."
"We saw," Sophia said quietly, throwing a silver thermal blanket over his shivering frame. "He detonated the boathouse and fled on foot through the estate's subterranean escape tunnel."
Julian managed a terrible, breathless smirk through cracked, bleeding lips. "No... he didn't escape. He took the bait."
May you like
Eleanor froze, looking down at him. "What are you talking about, Julian?"
"The drive in my tactical vest..." Julian coughed, spitting a streak of crimson onto the deck. "It wasn't the Lyon archive. That was an encrypted transponder loaded with military-grade spyware... mapped directly to the Interpol cyber-crimes server in Lyon. The moment David connects that drive to the Weaver's Guild mainframe... he burns their entire network from the inside out."
