Chapter 14
The darkness was absolute, heavy, and suffocating. The only sensations left were the ice-cold rush of water pounding against Clara’s chest and the terrifyingly close sound of Julian’s breathing echoing through the metal pipe behind them.
"Clara," Julian’s voice came from just a few feet away in the pitch black, smooth and horribly calm. "You're holding onto ashes. Mother is dead, the past is buried, and nobody is coming to save you."
Clara stood knee-deep in the rushing water, her hands still locked onto the iron bars of the sluice gate. Beside her, David was hyperventilating, his ragged gasps drowning out the roar of the storm. Beatrice was silent, her breathing shallow and raspy against the metal.
"He's right, you know," Beatrice whispered in the dark, her voice surprisingly steady. "The house was built on a lie, Clara. But you don't have to drown with it."
"What are you talking about?" Clara choked out, trying to find footing against the hydraulic pressure of the water building up behind them.
"The ledger," Beatrice said, her hand reaching out in the dark to touch Clara’s wrist. "Julian only wants the names. If he gets the ledger, he leaves us here to drown. If you throw it into the drainage current, the ink washes away before he can reach it. The truth disappears forever."
Behind them, the beam of Julian’s flashlight suddenly flickered back to life, painting the interior of the drainage pipe in a blinding, harsh white glare. Julian’s face appeared just ten feet away, smeared with dirt and sweat, his eyes wide and crazed as he lunged forward through the water.
"Give me the book, Clara!" Julian roared, his hand stretching out to grab the hem of her wet shirt.
Clara looked at the leather ledger in her left hand. Thirty years of deception, murder, bribery, and betrayal were bound between its water-stained covers. She looked at Julian’s grasping fingers, then at David’s terrified face, and finally out through the iron grate at the storm-drenched streets of Oakridge beyond.
With a sharp intake of breath, Clara didn't hand over the book, and she didn't throw it into the current.
Instead, she jammed the heavy leather-bound ledger directly into the mechanism of the rusted padlock holding the sluice gate shut, wedging it so hard between the shackle and the housing that the binding cracked with a loud, wooden snap.
"What did you do?!" Julian screamed, lunging the final few feet and grabbing Clara by the collar of her grey shirt, wrenching her backward against the corrugated wall.
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Clara didn't flinch. She stared straight into her father’s eyes, her breathing heavy, raw, and defiant, as the rising water behind them hit the jammed mechanism with the full, unstoppable force of the flash flood.
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