Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Sullivan was coordinating the evacuation through his radio, arranging for backup and medical support. The water continued to rise, making the tunnels increasingly dangerous. They needed to move.
“Can you walk?” Brooks asked.
“With help.”
He shifted his grip, supporting more of her weight. Together they started back toward the northeast passage, toward the route that would lead them to the surface. Behind them, deputies managed the prisoners, guiding them through water that now reached their chests.
The journey to the cave seemed longer than Vivienne remembered. Every step required concentration she barely had left. But Brooks was there, steady and solid, his presence anchoring her when exhaustion threatened to pull her under.
“Where’s Winston?” she asked, the question suddenly occurring to her.
“Don’t know. We haven’t encountered him. He must have taken a different route out.”
Vivienne felt a flicker of unease, but she was too drained to pursue it. Winston Aldrich was dangerous, calculating, and now desperate. But right now, all she could focus on was putting one foot in front of the other.
When they finally emerged into the cave, rain still poured through the opening but it felt like freedom. Melissa sat wrapped in a thermal blanket, talking to a paramedic. She looked up as they entered, her expression brightening with recognition.
“You made it.”
“We both did.” Vivienne managed a smile. “Thanks to you. The compass led Brooks right to where he needed to be.”
“And the journal,” Melissa said, holding up the leather-bound book. “Martha Morgan’s going to get answers after twenty-five years.”
Vivienne nodded, too tired to speak. Brooks was guiding her to sit, wrapping another thermal blanket around her shoulders. Someone handed her water and she drank mechanically, her body following instructions while her mind floated somewhere distant.
The spirits were quiet now. The urgent pressure that had driven her through these passages was gone, replaced by a different kind of exhaustion—the bone-deep weariness that came from pushing too far, giving too much.
But they’d done it. Melissa was alive. Gerald and Jeremy were captured. Lily’s evidence would finally see the light of day. Justice, delayed for twenty-five years, was within reach.
Brooks sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. Neither spoke. Words seemed unnecessary after everything they’d been through, after the moment when his mind had heard hers across impossible distance.
“You called me,” he said finally. “I don’t know how that’s possible. But I heard you.”
“And you came.”
“Always.” The word carried weight that had nothing to do with solving cases.
Vivienne leaned her head against his shoulder, too tired to maintain the careful distance she usually kept. His arm came around her, holding her steady as emergency personnel moved through the cave, coordinating the evacuation.
Outside, the storm was beginning to ease. The worst had passed. Dawn would come eventually, bringing light to spaces that had hidden in darkness for too long.
But for now, in this cave with rain falling and the sound of the ocean roaring below, Vivienne let herself rest. She’d earned it. They both had.
The dead could finally rest in peace. And maybe, for the first time in years, so could she.
TWELVE
brooks
The clock on his phone glowed two-seventeen a.m. Sleep wouldn’t come.
Case files from Melissa Clarkson’s disappearance spread across his kitchen table—photos and witness statements that should have held his attention. Instead, every time he closed his eyes, he saw Vivienne in the flooded tunnels, facing off with Gerald and Jeremy, refusing to back down. The way her knees had buckled when the adrenaline finally wore off. He’d caught her before she hit the water, half-carried her through the rising tide to the cave entrance where paramedics waited.
The image wouldn’t leave him: Vivienne soaked and hands trembling from cold and exhaustion. Scared and more worried about Melissa’s well-being than her own.
Case files blurred as exhaustion set in. He reached for his coffee mug, found it empty, and instead picked up the photograph of Traci Washington that he’d pulled from his wallet. Her smile in the picture looked forced now that he knew what to look for. The same expression Vivienne wore when she was maintaining her spiritual boundaries during intense contact—the look of someone managing overwhelming input while trying to appear composed.
Brooks reviewed the case timeline, cross-referencing every piece of information Vivienne had provided through her abilities with the physical discoveries they’d made. The scientific part of his mind still resisted accepting her abilities as real, but the detective in him couldn’t ignore results. Lily’s hidden camera in the secret chamber. The customs inspector’s badge from 1923. The financial ledgers in the lamp room documenting forty years of smuggling operations. Her accuracy rate was over ninety percent.
Three months before the warehouse raid that ended everything, Brooks and his partner Traci Washington had been working a human trafficking case that would have made their careers. The kind of case that got you promoted, got you noticed, got you interviewed by the media about how good police work saved lives.