Chapter 9 - The Reef of Fire
The deafening roar of the NYPD Aviation helicopter shook my teeth in their sockets.
Miller and I were strapped into the rear jump seats of the Bell 412, the cabin doors locked back, freezing spray from the harbor lashing our faces as the pilot banked sharply over the Verrazzano narrows. Below us, the black water was whipped into violent whitecaps by thirty-knot gale winds.
Through the darkness, Robbins Reef appeared like an ink stain surrounded by jagged, breaking surf.
And in the center of the rocks, wedged violently between two granite ledges, was the 42-foot Chris-Craft.
The vintage wooden vessel was broken in two, its bow pointing skyward at a sickening thirty-degree angle. Thick, acrid black smoke was billowing from the aft cabin windows, carrying the unmistakable, sweet, sickening stench of burning glycol and varnished mahogany.
Fifty yards away, the Coast Guard inflatable boat was fighting the treacherous breakers, unable to bridge the shallow, knife-like reefs without tearing its rubber pontoons to shreds.
“The roof!” Miller shouted through his headset, pointing down at the burning vessel. “We have to drop onto the cabin roof!”
The helicopter pilot’s voice crackled through our helmets: “Winds are gusting to forty, Detective! I can only hold this hover for ninety seconds or the rotor downwash will flip that wreck into the channel!”
“Deploy the hoist!” Miller barked.
A tactical rescue swimmer in full dry-suit gear hooked Miller and me into the heavy steel carabiner of the high-speed winch. Before my mind could process the terror of dropping into the dark abyss, the cable engaged.
We plummeted through the howling rotor wash.
The freezing salt spray hit my skin like needles, but the burning heat from the yacht rose up to meet us in a suffocating wall of toxic fumes. My boots slammed hard onto the sloped, wet fiberglass of the forward cabin deck.
Miller unhooked us in half a second, drawing his tactical entry axe from his harness.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
Miller smashed the reinforced safety glass of the main cabin companionway. Thick, blinding white smoke poured out of the breach, searing my throat and eyes.
I pulled my medical respirator over my mouth and nose, dropping onto my stomach to peer through the shattered hatch.
Inside, the cabin was an inferno.
Flames were licking up the teak paneling, fueled by a shattered bottle of solvent on the deck. Tied to the forward bulkhead, slumped unconscious in a pool of standing water, was Margaret Carter. Her silver hair was singed, her breathing shallow, stertorous—the death rattle of acute carbon monoxide and glycol inhalation.
And standing in the corner of the burning cabin, clutching a heavy steel briefcase against her chest, was Paige.
Her designer coat was blackened by soot, her hands blistered, but her eyes were wide with a feral, terrifying madness. In her right hand, she held a marine flare gun, the heavy red plastic barrel leveled straight at the ruptured fuel lines behind the engine block.
“STAY BACK!” Paige screamed through the smoke, her voice unrecognizable, shredded by fumes. “You take one step down those stairs, and I ignite the bilges! We all burn together!”
Miller dropped through the hatch, his Glock leveled at her chest. “Drop the flare, Paige! The game is over! Ryan is dead!”
Paige froze. For one fleeting second, a flicker of shock cracked through her manic mask.
“What?” she choked out.
“He drowned at Pier 41 twenty minutes ago,” Miller lied with cold, calculated precision, keeping her attention anchored on his eyes. “He gave us the transponder codes. He gave us everything. You’re holding an empty briefcase, Paige.”
“Liar!” she shrieked, her thumb cocking the heavy hammer of the flare gun. “He wouldn't give up the codes! He loved me!”
“He didn't love you, Paige,” a voice cut through the smoke.
I slid down the wooden stairs, stepping into the burning cabin, holding up the water-damaged, singed white muslin wrap I had retrieved from my bag.
Paige’s eyes snapped to the cloth.
“You left this behind in Astoria,” I said, my voice steady despite the searing heat blistering my skin. “You tested the glycol on Noah yesterday dawn. And when that didn't work fast enough, you told Ryan to pour the freezing slush. You knew Ryan would panic. You knew he would slap me, make a scene, and take all the blame.”
I took one deliberate step forward, ignoring the flames licking at my boots.
“You never wanted the inheritance to go to the Carter family, Paige,” I whispered, looking into her cold, dead eyes. “You were siphoning the offshore accounts into your maiden name in the Bahamas. Ryan wasn't your partner. He was your patsy.”
Paige’s jaw trembled. The flare gun shook in her blistered hand.
“He was weak,” she whispered, tears cutting clean lines through the soot on her cheeks. “A weak, sniveling boy who couldn't even give me a child. I spent eight years being treated like a second-class citizen by that old bitch tied to the wall! I earned that money! I EARNED IT!”
She screamed, raising the flare gun toward the fuel tanks.
BANG.
Miller’s service weapon fired once.
The hollow-point round shattered Paige’s right collarbone. The impact threw her backward against the navigation console; the flare gun flew from her hand, discharging harmlessly through the broken skylight into the night sky.
“MOVE!” Miller roared, lunging forward to pin Paige to the deck.
I didn't look at her.
I dove across the burning floorboards, my medical shears slicing through the heavy hemp ropes binding Margaret Carter to the bulkhead. The old woman was limp, her pulse fluttering at thirty beats per minute, her lips blue, her skin burning with fever.
I ripped open my trauma kit, jamming a pre-filled syringe of high-dose atropine directly into her deltoid muscle, followed by an intravenous line of saline to flush the toxins.
Above us, the helicopter winch cable descended through the shattered hatch like a lifeline from heaven.
“CLARA, HOOK HER UP!” Miller screamed, hauling Paige up by her good arm, zip-tying her wrists behind her back.
I strapped Margaret into the rescue harness, wrapping her frail body in the silver thermal space blanket. I gave the thumbs-up signal to the winch operator above.
The cable tightened. Margaret rose through the smoke, lifted out of the burning tomb toward the helicopter skids.
Then, beneath our feet, the wooden keel groaned.
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A massive harbor swell slammed into the Chris-Craft. The hull split completely down the centerline, freezing ocean water roaring through the floorboards in a deafening, torrential wave.
The cabin began to sink into the black rocks of Robbins Reef.
