Chapter 15 - The Man on the High Dive
"Arthur," Daniel breathed, the name tasting like ash and betrayal.
Arthur Pendelton had sat in the front row at Sarah’s funeral. Arthur had delivered the eulogy. He had wept openly, holding Daniel’s hand, telling him that Sarah was like a daughter to him, promising that if Daniel ever needed anything for Lily, the Pendelton Foundation would provide unlimited resources.
"You sat at my dining table," Daniel whispered, his voice trembling with an incandescent, white-hot fury. "You watched Lily blow out her candles on her ninth birthday. You gave her that silver music box."
"A lovely melody, isn't it?" Arthur smiled warmly, as though discussing an afternoon tea at a country club. "Tchaikovsky. Sarah loved it. It’s a pity she developed such an inconvenient moral conscience during her final trimester. She couldn't accept that the foundation’s foreign holdings were underwriting private security networks in Eastern Europe. She wanted to open the vault. She wanted to ruin forty years of generational wealth."
"So you killed her."
"I managed an inevitable liability," Arthur corrected smoothly, taking a step closer to Lily’s chair. He placed a gloved hand on the young girl’s trembling shoulder. Lily flinched, muffled sobs breaking behind the tape, her terrified eyes locked onto her father below. "And Vanessa was supposed to manage the rest. Vanessa was greedy, ambitious, and utterly lacking in subtlety. Drowning a child at a public garden party with twenty guests filming? Sheer theatrical incompetence. But then, you always were a sentimental fool, Daniel. You leaped into the water. You defied the script."
"She’s an eleven-year-old girl!" Daniel roared, his voice bouncing off the steel rafters. "Take the trusts! Take the shell companies! Take every cent my father ever stole! Let her go!"
"Oh, Daniel, you still don't understand the law," Arthur sighed, shaking his head with genuine pity. "The trust doesn't dissolve if you sign it over. The trust is irrevocable under the 1994 charter. It can only liquidate and transfer to the senior governing board upon the total biological extinction of the Mercer bloodline."
Arthur gestured toward Lily. "She is the final Mercer. Once she passes, the ninety-four million dollars in offshore securities automatically transfers to my holding accounts in Geneva. And you... well, Daniel, you will be the broken father who couldn't save his daughter a second time. You’ll be found in your home with an empty bottle of scotch and an open pill bottle. The tragedy writes itself."
"The poison," Daniel choked out. "What did you give her?"
"The catalyst peptide," Arthur checked his platinum wristwatch. "Dr. Vance’s finest work. In approximately five minutes, the molecular bridge will fuse with the compound already residing in her heart wall. She will slip away quite peacefully, I assure you. But to ensure the insurance investigators don't look too closely at the biochemistry... she must end her journey in the water. Just as it was intended three years ago."
Arthur looked at the mercenary on his left.
"Tip the chair," Arthur ordered softly.
"NO!" Daniel fired.
The .45 caliber slug struck the first mercenary square between the eyes before Arthur’s sentence had fully cleared his mouth. The man collapsed backward off the platform, his weapon clattering into the deep end with a massive splash.
The second mercenary opened fire on full auto, the muzzle flash illuminating the rafters in strobing bursts of yellow flame.
Daniel didn't run for cover. He threw himself forward, sliding across the slick tile floor as 9mm rounds chewed through the concrete around him. He fired twice while sliding—one bullet shattered the mercenary’s kneecap, the second punched through his throat.
The mercenary tumbled sideways, his flailing arm catching the leg of Lily’s wooden chair.
The chair tipped forward.
May you like
Lily screamed behind the tape as she, the chair, and the heavy iron counterweights plunged twenty meters through the empty air toward the black surface of the diving pool.
***
