Chapter 34
Another spray of bullets tore through the boathouse wall, sending splinters flying across the room like deadly confetti.
I pressed myself lower behind the crate, feeling the wound in my side scream in protest. Across the small space, Matt had taken cover behind an ancient outboard motor, his eyes meeting mine in a silent question: What now?
We were rapidly running out of options. The tactical part of my brain calculated our survival odds as increasingly dismal with each passing second.
"Stay down!" Victor barked, his voice cutting through the chaos of splintering wood and shattering glass.
He crouched by the doorway, surprisingly agile for a man his size, peering cautiously around the frame before jerking back as another shot punched through the spot where his head had been moments before.
Victor suddenly moved, not toward us but deeper into the boathouse, gesturing urgently with one hand. "There's a hatch under that tarp!" he shouted over the gunfire. "Back corner!"
I stared at him in momentary confusion, my FBI training screaming that this was a trap—that Victor was herding us into a corner where we'd be easier targets.
Yet his actions contradicted everything in his psychological profile.
The Victor Reeves in our files wouldn't risk himself to help federal agents; he'd be more likely to use us as human shields.
"Why are you helping us?" I demanded, even as another volley of bullets forced me to duck lower.
"Stop being so stubborn, for crying out loud. I’m trying to help you here.
Because she used me!" Victor's face contorted with a rage I recognized wasn't directed at us.
"Is that what you want to hear? She made me part of her sick game.
Now, move!" He punctuated his command by firing back through the shattered window, providing cover fire with a handgun.
Matt caught my eye, silently communicating that we had few options. Staying meant certain capture or death. The water beneath the boathouse offered our only realistic chance, even if Victor's motives remained unclear. He grabbed our backpack with supplies, then signaled to me that it was time.
"Go," I mouthed to Matt, gesturing toward the back corner where a moldy blue tarp lay crumpled against the wall. He nodded once and began moving in a combat crawl, staying as low as possible while bullets continued to tear through the fragile wooden structure around us.
I followed, wincing as my injured side scraped against the rough floorboards. Each movement sent fresh pain radiating across my ribcage, but the alternative—remaining exposed to increasingly accurate gunfire—provided powerful motivation to ignore the discomfort.
We reached the tarp as Victor continued providing sporadic cover fire, his massive frame still positioned between us and the main assault.
Matt yanked away the heavy canvas, revealing a square wooden hatch set into the floor.
Decades of salt water and humidity had swollen the wood, making it stick in its frame.
"Pull harder!" Victor shouted, ejecting an empty magazine and slamming a fresh one into his weapon with practiced efficiency. "There's a drop to the water, about six feet!"
Matt braced himself against an old equipment rack and pulled with both hands.
The hatch resisted, then surrendered with a groan of protesting wood.
Cold, damp air rushed up from the opening, carrying the briny smell of the bay.
Below, black water lapped against the pilings, invisible in the darkness beneath the structure.
Victor cursed, shifting position to fire back, when a bullet caught him high in the shoulder. The impact spun him halfway around, his face registering shock more than pain.
"Victor!" The shout escaped me before I could consider it, an instinctive response to seeing someone wounded, regardless of their past.
Blood spread across his shirt with alarming speed, but he waved off my concern with his good arm. "Go! Now!" he commanded, pressing his opposite hand against the wound. Despite the injury, he maintained his position, his body effectively shielding our escape route.
I hesitated, my gaze locked on Victor. The man who'd threatened me during his trial years ago was now bleeding to protect our escape. "Why?" I asked again, needing to understand even as bullets continued to shred our surroundings.
Victor's scarred face twisted into what might have been a smile in other circumstances. "Maybe I want redemption," he said, then fired another shot through the window. "Or maybe I just hate being manipulated more than I hate federal agents. What does it matter? Now, go!"
Matt's hand found mine, tugging me toward the hatch. "We need to move," he insisted, his eyes conveying what his words didn't—that staying would waste Victor's sacrifice.
I nodded, and moved toward the hatch. A final glance at Victor showed him reloading again, his movements slightly slower as blood loss began taking its toll. Our eyes met briefly, and I saw something I never expected to find in "The Collector"—a grim acceptance of consequences.
Another bullet splintered the wood near his head, showering him with debris. "Get underwater as soon as you hit. Swim under the dock to the east."
The tactical advice cemented my decision.
I slipped through the hatch, hanging momentarily from the edge before letting go.
The fall was brief, the shock of cold water intense as it closed over my head.
My clothes immediately became waterlogged, dragging me deeper before I kicked back toward the surface.
I broke through just in time to see Matt drop through the hatch above, his body silhouetted briefly against the fractured ceiling of the boathouse before he plunged into the dark water beside me. Above us, the gunfire continued, punctuated by Victor's increasingly sporadic return fire.
The water was frigid, stealing my breath and sending sharp pains through my injured side.
Matt surfaced beside me with barely a splash, his eyes immediately finding mine.
No words were necessary—we both understood the gravity of what had just happened.
Victor Reeves, the man I'd helped put away years ago, had just risked his life to save ours.
As we began to swim silently toward the eastern side of the dock as instructed, the boathouse behind us erupted in a new frenzy of gunfire.
I couldn't tell whether Victor was still returning fire.
Either way, his intervention had bought us precious minutes—and possibly revealed the key to unraveling Sarah's frame once and for all.
If we survived long enough.