Chapter 29 - The Ice Gives Way
Nathan’s eyes flicked toward Arthur’s left wrist.
A thick, military-grade biometric band was strapped tight against the lawyer’s bruised skin, its digital display pulsing with a steady red heartbeat readout: *112 BPM*.
"You’re bluffing," Nathan said, though his blood ran cold. "The boys are in the secondary garage."
"And where does the main fuel line run, Nathan?" Arthur hissed, his eyes gleaming with mad, desperate triumph. "Right beneath the concrete foundation of that garage. You kill me... you let my core temperature drop or my pulse stop... and Toby and Eli go up in a column of fire that will be seen from Milwaukee."
Nathan looked down at the man who had guided him through his father’s funeral, the man who had stood beside him at his first wedding, the man who had systematically orchestrated the systematic destruction of his family.
"What do you want, Arthur?"
"Step back," Arthur commanded, struggling to his knees on the slick ice. "Let me take the case. Let me take the snowmobile parked by the boathouse. Give me two hours to reach the private airstrip in Kenosha. Once I’m in international airspace, the override code will be transmitted to your terminal."
Nathan stood motionless. The wind screamed across the lake, the ice beneath their boots groaning under the shifting pressure of the thermal currents below.
"Two hours," Nathan repeated softly.
"Two hours," Arthur said, reaching out his hand toward the aluminum flight case. "A small price to pay for your sons' lives. Isn't that what a good father does, Nathan? He pays the debt."
Arthur’s fingers brushed the handle of the case.
In that fraction of a second, Nathan saw it: the subtle shift in Arthur’s eyes, the slight twitch of his right index finger sliding toward a secondary trigger concealed beneath the aluminum handle.
There was no override code. There was no two-hour window. The case wasn't just carrying documents—it was the detonator.
Nathan didn't raise the rifle to shoot Arthur’s chest.
He aimed the heavy 7.62mm barrel straight down at the ice between Arthur’s knees and fired four rounds in an instantaneous burst of thunder.
The armor-piercing rounds shattered the eight-inch crust of black ice into spiderwebs of fractured white.
"Nathan, no!" Arthur screamed.
The ice gave way with a sound like a cracking whip.
A fifteen-foot section of the shelf collapsed into the freezing black depths of the lake, plunging Arthur, the flight case, and three tons of broken ice into the swirling, sub-zero current below.
Arthur surfaced once, his mouth wide in a silent, freezing shriek, his hands clawing desperately at the slick edges of the ice shelf. The red readout on his biometric watch flashed violently: *84 BPM... 62 BPM... 41 BPM...*
"Nathan!" Arthur choked out, the black water dragging his heavy coat downward into the abyss. "The relay—!"
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Nathan dropped the rifle, lunged forward onto his stomach, and slammed his bare hand into the freezing water, catching Arthur by the wrist just as the lawyer’s head disappeared beneath the surface.
***
