Chapter 17 - The Ghost of the Harbor
The wind roared in Clara’s ears as they plummeted through the darkness, the zip-cable screaming through the friction brake. Water sprayed upward in a violent mist before the cable caught, jerking them violently ten feet above the churning black waves of the Hudson.
Clara unclipped the harness and dropped into the freezing water, kicking with all her strength to keep Lily’s head above the surface.
"I have you, baby! I have you!" Clara gasped, spitting out river water, swimming toward the concrete pier pylons where an industrial tugboat was idling in the fog.
Hands reached down from the low deck of the tugboat.
"Grab the net!" a voice shouted.
Clara grabbed the coarse rope netting, hauling herself upward with the last ounce of strength in her aching muscles. Strong hands pulled them onto the wooden deck. Clara collapsed onto her back, immediately checking Lily.
Lily coughed, crying loudly—the sweetest sound Clara had ever heard in her life. The child was wet and shivering, but alive. Unbroken.
Footsteps thudded on the wooden deck. Clara snapped her gun up instantly, aiming between the eyes of the man approaching her.
"Easy, Clara," the man said, raising his weathered, calloused hands.
Clara froze. The man stood under the dim yellow deck lamp, wearing a heavy maritime wool coat. He had steel-grey hair, a jagged scar across his chin, and piercing blue eyes that looked undeniably familiar.
"Jonathan... Sterling?" Clara breathed, the gun trembling in her grip. "Harrison’s father? You died... you died seven years ago in the Alps."
"That’s what Arthur Vance and the Syndicate wanted Harrison to believe," Jonathan Sterling said, kneeling down beside her, his voice rough with emotion as he looked at the shivering child in Clara’s arms. "I had to vanish to build the counter-strike. But Harrison... did he make it off that bridge?"
Clara looked back at the flaming span of the Henry Hudson Bridge high above them. Emergency sirens were now wailing from every corner of the city.
"He was trapped," Clara choked out, the tears finally breaking through her stoic defense. "He sacrificed himself so Lily and I could jump."
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Jonathan clenched his fists, his jaw tightening with raw, unbridled fury. He turned to his deckhand. "Scramble the tactical skiffs. If my son is still breathing on that bridge, we tear Manhattan apart until we find him. If he’s dead... God help every member of that Syndicate, because I will burn their world to the bedrock."
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