Chapter 13 - Midnight at the Crypt
Rain hammered against the stained-glass dome of Trinity Church, casting fractured ribbons of crimson and indigo over the Sterling family mausoleum. The cemetery below Wall Street was shrouded in a suffocating Manhattan fog, the gargoyles above dripping water like weeping witnesses to a century of buried crimes.
"You shouldn't be here," Daniel warned under the black umbrella, his hand firmly wrapped around the grip of his sidearm beneath his trench coat. "If Victoria Drake is alive and operating in New York, she wants you out in the open. She used Leo to bait you."
"Leo is safe in a fortified military clinic outside the city under Eleanor's private battalion," Emily replied, her voice cold as ice. She wore all black, the rain misting her dark hair into clinging strands against her porcelain skin. "I’m done reacting, Daniel. In the diner, when a customer threatened the girls, you didn't wait behind the counter for him to throw a bottle. You met him at the door with a skillet."
"This isn't a greasy spoon on 42nd Street, Emily," Daniel said grimly. "This is an international syndicate. Victoria Drake wasn't just your father’s ex-wife. She was the chief strategist of the Blackwood Consortium—the banking shadow network that laundered the Sterling fortune through European weapon deals."
They reached the heavy, wrought-iron gates of the crypt. The lock had been severed cleanly with an industrial hydraulic cutter.
Daniel raised his weapon, sweeping the beam of a high-intensity tactical flashlight into the subterranean gloom. The air smelled of damp granite, wet earth, and fresh lilies. Emily followed him down the worn stone steps, her boots clicking softly against the marble.
Along the walls rested the stone sarcophagi of the Sterling ancestors: rail barons, corrupt senators, and predatory financiers who had bled the nation dry. At the far end of the crypt stood the tomb of Thomas Sterling.
The massive stone lid had been dragged aside.
Emily stepped forward, the beam of her own light plunging into the dark interior of the opened casket. She gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.
The casket was empty of human remains. In place of Thomas Sterling's bones lay thousands of microscopic microfiche slides, surrounded by rows of digital server drives flashing with eerie blue LED pulses.
And resting squarely atop the technology was a high-resolution, full-color surveillance photograph taken just forty-five minutes ago: Daniel, standing in the hospital corridor, slipping a tiny glass vial into his inside coat pocket.
Emily felt all the blood leave her brain. The crypt seemed to spin violently around her.
She slowly turned her gaze toward Daniel, the man who had pulled her off the rooftop, the man who had promised to protect her, the only soul she had dared to trust in this den of vipers.
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"Daniel..." Emily breathed, her voice trembling with an agonizing betrayal. "What was in that vial?"
Daniel didn't flinch. He kept his gun pointed forward into the dark, but a terrible, tragic sorrow washed across his rugged face. "Step away from the altar, Emily. Now."
