Chapter 14 - The Edge of the Cliff-14
The wind off the Pacific nearly blew me off my feet as I reached the broad, concrete helipad extending out over the dark ocean waves.
A small, four-seater black helicopter was idling on the pad, its rotor blades spinning wildly, kicking up sea spray and rain into a blinding vortex.
A man in a dark trench coat—Marcus Lindqvist—was frantically throwing two heavy aluminum duffel bags into the rear passenger door of the aircraft.
"MARCUS!" I screamed above the roar of the engine.
Marcus whipped around, pulling a silver pistol from his coat pocket. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, completely unhinged with panic. When he saw me—a wet, unarmed woman standing twenty feet away in jeans and a sweater—his mouth twisted into a wild, terrifying sneer.
"You!" Marcus shouted, his voice barely audible over the chopper blades. "David Vance's daughter!"
"It's over, Marcus!" I yelled, stepping forward despite the gun pointed at my chest. "The police are inside! You aren't leaving!"
"I have thirty million dollars in bearer bonds in these bags, you little bitch!" Marcus shrieked, raising the pistol directly at my head. "I spent ten years building this empire with Clara! I'm not dying in a cage!"
He squeezed the trigger.
A loud BANG echoed across the terrace, but it wasn't his gun that fired.
Marcus’s body jolted violently. A red stain bloomed across his chest as a high-caliber round from a police sniper positioned on the roof of the estate ripped through him. Marcus dropped his pistol, staggering backward from the force of the impact.
He tripped over the metal landing gear of the idling helicopter.
With a sickening, desperate gasp, Marcus reached out to grab the open doorframe of the aircraft, but his hands slicked with rain and blood slipped from the wet metal. He fell backward, his heavy leather coat catching on the rear rotor assembly.
A horrific, metal-grinding crunch shattered the air.
The helicopter jerked violently to the side as the rear rotor shattered against the concrete. The tail boom snapped, sending the tail assembly spinning out of control. The main rotor blades clipped the edge of the sea cliff, showering the terrace with sparks and flying shrapnel!
"DOWN!" Detective Vance screamed, tackling me from behind, dragging me flat onto the concrete pad just as a jagged piece of metal blade flew directly over our heads, embedding itself three inches deep into the concrete wall behind us.
The destroyed helicopter tilted off the edge of the helipad, sliding backward into the dark, screaming abyss below.
A heavy splash echoed up from the rocks eighty feet down, followed by the hissing roar of ocean waves swallowing the wreckage, the money, and Marcus Lindqvist whole.
Silence descended on the terrace, broken only by the sound of the falling rain and the rhythmic crashing of the tide against the rocks below.
Detective Vance pulled me up, her face covered in sea spray and soot. "Are you alright?" she breathed, her hands shaking as she inspected me for injuries.
I stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down into the dark, churning water where the remains of Clara’s empire had vanished forever.
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I took a deep, clean breath of the salty rain air.
"I'm fine," I whispered, tears mixing with the water on my face. "It's finally over."
