Chapter 20 - The Man with the Silver Ring
The sirens came forty minutes later.
Dozens of state trooper vehicles, fire trucks, and federal tactical vans lined the perimeter of the Mercer Shipyard. High-powered halogen spotlights swept across the smoldering, blackened ruins of the dry dock. Fireboats in the river were pumping thousands of gallons of water onto the hiss of dying embers.
Ava sat on the back bumper of an emergency rescue ambulance, a thick wool blanket draped over her shivering shoulders. An EMT was gently binding her dislocated shoulder in a tactical sling, while another paramedic checked Oliver’s vital signs inside the heated interior of the rig.
Elena was sitting on the floor of the ambulance beside Oliver, holding the boy’s hands, kissing his forehead over and over, weeping tears of profound, broken relief. Oliver was wrapped in three foil warming blankets, sipping warm apple juice from a paper cup, safe.
A soot-covered state police captain walked over to Ava, removing his helmet.
"Miss Mercer?"
Ava looked up, her face pale, streaked with soot and river mud. "Did you find them?"
The captain looked toward the burning wreckage in the basin, his expression grim. "The dive team just pulled Detective Vance from the water near the outer pier. She took some shrapnel to the abdomen and a fractured collarbone, but she's conscious. She’s on her way to Westchester Medical Center. She’s going to survive."
Ava let out a ragged, shaking breath. "And Julian?"
The captain shook his head. "The wheelhouse took a direct hit when the tanks blew. We found parts of a trench coat and biological matter consistent with the blast radius... but the river current through that basin is running at eight knots. If his body was blown into the main channel, it could be halfway to Manhattan by sunrise. We're classifying him as presumed deceased."
*Presumed deceased.*
The exact same words the French police had used twelve years ago.
The words echoed in Ava’s mind like a hollow toll of a funeral bell.
Twenty minutes later, the EMTs cleared Ava to walk. The estate’s armored Maybach arrived at the police checkpoint, sent by Mercer Global’s interim legal team to transport Ava, Elena, and Oliver to a secure, fortified penthouse in Midtown.
Ava walked slowly across the gravel toward the car, the physical pain in her shoulder completely overshadowed by an uncanny, crawling sensation on the back of her neck.
The rain had finally stopped, replaced by a dense, suffocating river fog that blanketed the abandoned shipyard in ghostly white silence.
As the chauffeur held open the rear door for Elena and Oliver, Ava paused, looking back toward the tree line bordering the gravel road.
Fifty yards away, standing beneath the dripping canopy of an ancient weeping willow, was a tall figure shrouded in a dark, floor-length cashmere coat.
Ava froze. Her breath caught in her throat.
The man was not wearing a police uniform. He was not an EMT, a firefighter, or an investigator. He stood completely motionless, watching the ambulance with cold, calculated detachment.
The flashing red strobe lights of the emergency vehicles swept across the clearing, illuminating the figure for a fraction of a second.
The man raised his right hand to adjust the brim of his fedora.
On his third finger, catching the red emergency light like a drop of fresh blood, was a heavy platinum signet ring engraved with a soaring falcon—the ancient, unique Mercer family crest.
A ring that had never belonged to Julian.
A ring that had belonged exclusively to Nicholas Mercer... the ring he was supposedly wearing on his hand when his body was lost at sea off the shoals of Nantucket nine months ago.
The man tilted his head slightly, locking eyes with Ava through the swirling fog.
His lips moved, whispering words lost to the wind, before he turned smoothly on his heel and melted back into the impenetrable blackness of the forest.
Ava took a step toward the trees, her blood running completely cold, her hand trembling against the door of the car.
"Dad...?" she whispered into the freezing night.
May you like
Inside the Maybach, Oliver suddenly dropped his juice cup, pointed his tiny finger out the fogged window toward the dark woods, and spoke a single, terrifying word that shattered Ava’s reality into a million jagged pieces:
"Daddy."
