Chapter 18 - The Prison Break Tape
The platform was gone. Where Noah had been lying just seconds before was now nothing but empty, rain-lashed air.
"NOAH!" Daniel’s voice ripped from his lungs in a sound of utter devastation.
"Dad! I’m here! I’m here!"
A small, shaking voice came from just above them.
Daniel looked up through the freezing downpour. Noah was clinging with both arms to an iron mooring ring bolted into the granite cliff wall, his legs dangling over the precipice. When Daniel had charged Vanessa, the boy had used the last ounce of his strength to leap for the stone anchor.
"Hold on, Noah! Do not look down!" Daniel roared.
Beneath Daniel’s forearm, Vanessa was turning blue, her hands clawing desperately at his face, her fingernails tearing gouges into his cheeks. Her knife had fallen onto the stone step between them.
Daniel looked down into the eyes of the woman who had poisoned his wife, terrified his son, thrown his infant down a flight of stairs, and hunted them across state lines. He could push his forearm down for thirty more seconds, crush her trachea, and end the nightmare permanently. The ocean would take her body. The police would call it justifiable self-defense. No jury on earth would convict him.
Vanessa saw the judgment in his eyes. For the first time, the triumphant arrogance in her gaze flickered, replaced by the sheer, unadulterated terror of a trapped animal.
"Daniel... please..." she choked out, barely a wheeze.
Daniel’s fingers twitched toward the knife on the rock. Every instinct screamed for blood. Every bruised rib, every sleepless night, every tear Noah had shed cried out for her death.
Then, Maya let out a soft, trembling whimper against his chest.
Daniel closed his eyes for a split second. If he killed Vanessa in cold blood right here, on these rocks, before the eyes of his children, Vanessa would win. She would turn him into the very monster she claimed he was. She would leave Noah and Maya with a killer for a father.
"No," Daniel whispered, his voice hard as the granite beneath their feet. "You don't get the ocean, Vanessa. You get a concrete box. For the rest of your miserable life."
With a brutal twist of his body, Daniel slammed Vanessa’s head against the rock wall with just enough force to render her unconscious. Her body went limp, collapsing onto the stone steps.
Daniel didn't waste a heartbeat. He ripped off his belt, binding Vanessa’s wrists behind her back with ruthless efficiency, looping the leather through an iron cable attached to the cliff stairs.
Then he reached up, extending his trembling, bloodied hand toward the mooring ring. "Noah! Take my hand!"
Noah looked down, his knuckles white, his strength failing. "I can't reach, Dad!"
"Yes, you can, Noah! You fought through the fire, you fought through the hallway! Reach for me, son!"
With a sob of pure determination, Noah let go of the ring with one hand and reached downward. Daniel caught the boy’s wrist in an iron grip, hauling him up against his chest with a single, massive heave.
The three of them collapsed onto the wet stone steps, tangled together in the freezing rain, gasping for air as the storm raged around them.
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Ten minutes later, flashing blue and red lights illuminated the top of the bluff. Four Maine State Police cruisers screeched to a halt beside the wrecked tow truck, their sirens wailing through the mist. Officers with rifles drawn descended the stairs, finding Daniel sitting on the rocks, his children buried in his arms, his foot pinned firmly to the spine of the unconscious woman at his feet.
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