Sarah reached deeply into her coat pocket and pulled out the heavy leather binder. She carefully opened the hidden pouch of diamonds. Even in the incredibly dim, flickering light of the lighter, the stones sparkled with a terrifying, icy brilliance. Millions of dollars. A literal fortune in compressed carbon.
“We give him back the diamonds,” Sarah stated firmly.
Caleb immediately shook his head. “He’ll just take the stones and ensure we disappear anyway. That’s exactly how Leo operates. He doesn’t ever make fair deals.”
“He’ll definitely make this one,” Sarah said, a daring plan rapidly forming in her active mind. It was a risky plan that truly felt like it was being whispered directly by Margaret herself. “Because we absolutely aren’t going to give them to him. We’re going to completely destroy them.”
Caleb looked at her, entirely confused. “Destroy them? You can’t just easily smash a diamond, Sarah.”
“No,” she said, her eyes drifting to the digital map on her phone, which finally had a tiny sliver of cellular signal. “But you can definitely lose them. Forever.”
She pointed to a specific location on the glowing map, about ten miles straight north. “The Pathfinder Dam. The main overflow spillway,” she said confidently. “The massive storm has the river raging violently tonight. If those diamonds go directly into the deep overflow, they’ll be washed violently into the gorge, buried forever under thousands of tons of heavy silt and crushing rock. Entirely gone.”
Caleb managed a highly painful, exhausted smile. “You really are her daughter. You’ve definitely got her sheer grit.”
“Can you ride?” she asked him seriously.
“If I don’t, I’m caught anyway,” he replied grimly.
They mounted the heavy bikes once again. The freezing rain had gradually turned to sharp sleet, stinging their exposed skin relentlessly. They navigated the dangerous logging trails in complete silence, moving swiftly like unseen ghosts through the dense Wyoming wilderness.
Sarah confidently took the lead this time, entirely driven by a cold, protective fury. She absolutely wasn’t running in fear anymore. She was deliberately luring the wolf directly into a carefully set trap.
As they rode through the storm, Sarah thought deeply about those quiet Arrival Day dinners. She remembered the specific way Margaret would look intensely at her, constantly searching for hidden signs of deep trauma, desperately searching for the lingering ghost of the life she had abruptly altered.
Sarah fully realized now that those quiet dinners were never celebrations. They were deep, emotional penance. Margaret had willingly lived her entire life in a terrible prison of her own paranoid making, strictly so Sarah could truly be free. Now, Sarah had to finally finish the sentence.
They successfully reached the massive Pathfinder Dam roughly an hour later. It was an incredibly imposing structure of solid concrete and wet stone, holding back the fiercely roaring North Platte River. The intense storm had the volatile water levels dangerously high.
The deafening sound of the massive overflow spillway was a constant, terrifying roar, a continuous thunder that physically shook the wet ground beneath them. Sarah confidently stopped her bike near the restricted maintenance access road. The entire area was completely deserted, illuminated only by the harsh, yellow glare of the towering security floodlights.
“Call him,” Sarah said, handing Caleb the untraceable burner phone she had found hidden in the bike’s saddlebag. “I know you remember the number.”
Caleb dialed the digits carefully. He put the call on speakerphone.
“Danvers,” a voice rasped through the static. It was incredibly smooth, deeply cultured, and undeniably terrifying. Leo Varga. “I’m genuinely surprised you’re still walking. My men reported you somehow drove them entirely off the road.”
“I’m significantly harder to catch than your hired help, Leo,” Caleb said, his voice actively straining from the pain of his injury. “I have the girl safely with me. And I have the stones.”
“I’m listening.”
“The dam. The main overflow bridge. You have exactly twenty minutes. Come entirely alone or the girl tosses the bag directly into the roaring spillway. You know how strong the current is right now. You’ll never recover a single stone.”
There was a long, highly tense pause on the line. “If I see a single police cruiser, if I hear a single helicopter siren, I will ensure this entire county regrets it. Just you, Leo. Just us. Let’s finally end this thirty-year chase.”
Caleb crushed the small phone under his heavy boot and kicked it directly into the dark water below. “He’s very close,” Caleb said. “He was definitely tracking the active phone signal anyway. He’ll be right here in ten.”
They walked cautiously out onto the slippery maintenance bridge. It was a very narrow, highly exposed steel walkway suspended directly over the roaring spillway. Far below them, thousands of gallons of pitch-black water churned and foamed violently, crashing aggressively onto the jagged rocks hundreds of feet below.
The cold spray soaked them instantly. Sarah stood firmly in the exact middle of the bridge, the heavy leather pouch securely in her hand. Caleb stood roughly ten feet behind her, carefully concealed in the deep shadows of a massive concrete pillar, keeping careful watch on the sole entrance.
They waited in the freezing storm. Exactly ten minutes later, bright headlights cut sharply through the driving sleet. A single, dark car—a sleek, heavily armored sedan—rolled slowly onto the restricted access road.
It stopped. The heavy door opened. An impeccably dressed older man stepped confidently out.
Leo Varga was well into his seventies, but he didn’t look frail in the slightest. He wore a long, expensive wool coat and held himself completely upright with the arrogant posture of a king. He leaned slightly on an elegant cane, but Sarah deeply suspected it was far more than just a simple walking aid.
He walked purposefully onto the narrow bridge, the howling wind whipping his stark white hair. He stopped exactly twenty feet away from Sarah. He deliberately didn’t look at Caleb’s obvious hiding spot, though he surely knew the man was waiting there. He looked only intently at Sarah.
“You look exactly like your father,” Leo said calmly. His smooth voice somehow carried perfectly over the deafening roar of the raging water. “Poor Robert. He truly never had the required stomach for this type of difficult business.”