Chapter 16 - The Twenty-Meter Plunge
The sound of the impact was like a thunderclap inside the enclosed concrete cavern.
Lily hit the water feet-first, but the heavy wooden frame and the ropes binding her legs dragged her immediately beneath the surface, pulled down by thirty pounds of lead weights attached to the chair’s base.
Daniel didn't look up to see where Arthur Pendelton was. He didn't check if Arthur was drawing a weapon.
His entire universe narrowed down to a single terrifying image: the white bubbles churning in the deep well, rushing toward the bottom drain twenty feet below the surface.
Daniel threw his empty weapon aside and dove.
The shock of the cold water hit his skin like a wall of ice. The chlorinated depths were illuminated only by the faint, eerie glow of the underwater maintenance lamps at the bottom of the pool.
Through the distortion of the green-tinted water, Daniel saw his daughter.
Lily was sinking fast, her brown hair billowing around her pale face like a halo of smoke. The duct tape had peeled partially away from her lips under the violent friction of the fall. Small, desperate silver bubbles were escaping her mouth. Her eyes were wide, fixed on him as he cut through the water toward her with savage, tearing strokes.
*Not again,* Daniel’s mind screamed through the burning pressure in his chest. *NOT AGAIN!*
He reached her at fifteen feet.
He locked his left arm around Lily’s waist, pulling her small, shaking body flush against his chest. With his right hand, he whipped his folding combat knife from his pocket, flicking the serrated blade open with a snap of his thumb.
He slashed at the nylon cord binding her wrists. The blade cut clean through. Lily’s hands instantly shot upward, wrapping around his neck with the exact same desperate, unyielding grip she had used three years ago when he had pulled her from Vanessa’s swimming pool.
*Daddy...* her eyes screamed through the water.
Daniel saw the purple discoloration spreading across her neck—the catalyst peptide was reacting. Her chest was seizing in violent, involuntary contractions. The chemical was locking down her diaphragm. She didn't have minutes. She had seconds.
Daniel kicked downward toward the heavy ropes anchoring her ankles to the chair.
He sawed frantically at the thick marine cord. The blade bit deep, but the fibers were reinforced with steel wire. The knife slipped, cutting across Daniel’s own forearm in a blooming cloud of dark crimson. He didn't feel it. He jammed the blade into the knot, twisting with all the hydraulic force of his shoulder.
The wire snapped.
The weighted chair broke free, tumbling into the deep drain grating below.
Daniel planted both boots against the metal pool floor and kicked upward with everything he had left.
His lungs were on fire. Black spots danced across the edges of his vision. Lily’s grip on his neck was weakening, her fingers slipping against his wet skin as unconsciousness claimed her.
*Fight it, Lily!* he screamed silently into the void. *BREATHE!*
They broke the surface together in a violent eruption of spray and air.
Daniel hauled Lily onto the ceramic lip of the diving deck, his own chest heaving in ragged, tearing gasps. Lily lay motionless, her face blue, her lips slack, no breath passing between them.
"Lily! LILY!" Daniel dropped to his knees, locking his hands over her sternum.
*One. Two. Three. Four. Five.*
He tilted her head, cleared her airway, and breathed his own life into her lungs.
From the shadow of the emergency exit doors thirty yards away, Arthur Pendelton stood under the dripping red exit light, a sleek silver silenced pistol leveled directly at Daniel’s forehead.
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"Remarkable athleticism, Daniel," Arthur murmured, his finger tightening on the trigger. "A truly touching display of fatherhood. But as I said... the script has already been written."
***
