Matt caught my eye, silently communicating that we had few options. Staying meant certain capture or death. The water beneath the boathouse offered our only realistic chance, even if Victor's motives remained unclear. He grabbed our backpack with supplies, then signaled to me that it was time.
"Go," I mouthed to Matt, gesturing toward the back corner where a moldy blue tarp lay crumpled against the wall. He nodded once and began moving in a combat crawl, staying as low as possible while bullets continued to tear through the fragile wooden structure around us.
I followed, wincing as my injured side scraped against the rough floorboards. Each movement sent fresh pain radiating across my ribcage, but the alternative—remaining exposed to increasingly accurate gunfire—provided powerful motivation to ignore the discomfort.
We reached the tarp as Victor continued providing sporadic cover fire, his massive frame still positioned between us and the main assault. Matt yanked away the heavy canvas, revealing a square wooden hatch set into the floor. Decades of salt water and humidity had swollen the wood, making it stick in its frame.
"Pull harder!" Victor shouted, ejecting an empty magazine and slamming a fresh one into his weapon with practiced efficiency. "There's a drop to the water, about six feet!"
Matt braced himself against an old equipment rack and pulled with both hands. The hatch resisted, then surrendered with a groan of protesting wood. Cold, damp air rushed up from the opening,carrying the briny smell of the bay. Below, black water lapped against the pilings, invisible in the darkness beneath the structure.
Victor cursed, shifting position to fire back, when a bullet caught him high in the shoulder. The impact spun him halfway around, his face registering shock more than pain.
"Victor!" The shout escaped me before I could consider it, an instinctive response to seeing someone wounded, regardless of their past.
Blood spread across his shirt with alarming speed, but he waved off my concern with his good arm. "Go! Now!" he commanded, pressing his opposite hand against the wound. Despite the injury, he maintained his position, his body effectively shielding our escape route.
I hesitated, my gaze locked on Victor. The man who'd threatened me during his trial years ago was now bleeding to protect our escape. "Why?" I asked again, needing to understand even as bullets continued to shred our surroundings.
Victor's scarred face twisted into what might have been a smile in other circumstances. "Maybe I want redemption," he said, then fired another shot through the window. "Or maybe I just hate being manipulated more than I hate federal agents. What does it matter? Now, go!"
Matt's hand found mine, tugging me toward the hatch. "We need to move," he insisted, his eyes conveying what his words didn't—that staying would waste Victor's sacrifice.
I nodded, and moved toward the hatch. A final glance at Victor showed him reloading again, his movements slightly slower as blood loss began taking its toll. Our eyes met briefly, and I saw something I never expected to find in "The Collector"—a grim acceptance of consequences.
Another bullet splintered the wood near his head, showering him with debris. "Get underwater as soon as you hit. Swim under the dock to the east."
The tactical advice cemented my decision. I slipped through the hatch, hanging momentarily from the edge before letting go. The fall was brief, the shock of cold water intense as it closed over myhead. My clothes immediately became waterlogged, dragging me deeper before I kicked back toward the surface.
I broke through just in time to see Matt drop through the hatch above, his body silhouetted briefly against the fractured ceiling of the boathouse before he plunged into the dark water beside me. Above us, the gunfire continued, punctuated by Victor's increasingly sporadic return fire.
The water was frigid, stealing my breath and sending sharp pains through my injured side. Matt surfaced beside me with barely a splash, his eyes immediately finding mine. No words were necessary—we both understood the gravity of what had just happened. Victor Reeves, the man I'd helped put away years ago, had just risked his life to save ours.
As we began to swim silently toward the eastern side of the dock as instructed, the boathouse behind us erupted in a new frenzy of gunfire. I couldn't tell whether Victor was still returning fire. Either way, his intervention had bought us precious minutes—and possibly revealed the key to unraveling Sarah's frame once and for all.
If we survived long enough.
Chapter 35
Matt's handfound my arm underwater, squeezing gently to get my attention before pointing toward the eastern shore where a cluster of seagrapes offered potential cover. I nodded, understanding his plan without words—we would stay submerged as much as possible, surfacing only for quick, silent breaths as we made our way to concealment.
We pushed off from the pier's shadow, using gentle, muffled strokes that barely disturbed the water's surface. The cold bit deeper with each passing second, numbing my fingers and sending shivers through my core. My wounded side throbbed in protest against the exertion, but I channeled the pain into focus, using it to keep my mind sharp despite the hypothermia gradually setting in.
Fifteen feet from the pier, I paused to tread water, taking another carefully controlled breath as I scanned our surroundings. The boathouse was now silhouetted against the night sky, its damaged structure creaking in the wind. No movement was visible through the shattered windows. No flashes of gunfire. No sign of Victor. The stillness felt calculated rather than coincidental—the quiet before another storm.
That's when I saw her.
A figure had appeared at the edge of the dock, illuminated by the same moonlight that had earlier revealed Victor in the doorway. Sarah Winters stood motionless, staring out across the water, her posture relaxed despite the violence she had just orchestrated. She wore dark clothing—practical for a night operation—with her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Even from a distance, I could see that she held a gun at her side with the comfortable familiarity of someone who knew how to use it.
What struck me most, however, was her expression. The Sarah I knew—or thought I knew—had always maintained a certain softness in her features, a helpful warmth in her eyes. That mask had fallen away completely. In its place was something predatory, almost hungry. Her lips curved in a smile that contained no warmth, only satisfaction. Her eyes scanned the water's surface with the calculated patience of a hunter tracking wounded prey.
I'd interviewed dozens of killers during my FBI career, had stared into the eyes of people who had committed unimaginable acts. I recognized what I was seeing now—the unguarded moment when a predator believes they're unobserved, when the performance drops away, and the true nature emerges. Sarah's transformation was so complete that she might have been a different person entirely from the warm bookstore owner who had served us cookies in her perfect suburban kitchen.
Matt tugged at my sleeve, urging me to keep moving. I followed his lead, pushing through the water with increasingly numb limbs. Each stroke sent fresh pain radiating from my injured side, but I focused on survival rather than suffering.
Sarah moved along the dock, her movements unhurried, confident. She held something in her other hand—a flashlight, which she now switched on, sweeping its beam across the water's surface in methodical passes. The light reflected off the gentle waves, creating deceptive patterns that would make it difficult to distinguish swimmers from natural movement. Her technique suggested training or research—one more detail that didn't align with the persona of a simple bookstore owner.
"She's hunting," I thought, the professional part of my braincontinuing to analyze even as my body fought the cold water. Not searching in panic or anger, but hunting with precision and patience. This wasn't impulsive violence but calculated elimination of obstacles. In her mind, I was simply a problem to solve on her path to the life she believed she deserved.
