Chapter 6 - THE TUNNEL
Heat struck my face as I crossed the conservation lab.
“Claire, come back!” Grant shouted.
I wrapped my jacket over my mouth and slid beneath a burning worktable. Sprinkler water turned ash into black streaks across the floor.
The tunnel door was almost shut.
I dove through the remaining gap and hit concrete on the other side.
Victoria was twenty yards ahead, barefoot, moving faster than I had ever seen her move. She still held the forged ledger box.
“You cannot escape,” I yelled.
She glanced back. “I don’t need to escape. I need five minutes.”
At the end of the tunnel waited a museum courier van.
The engine was running.
A driver in a dark cap opened the rear door.
Victoria had planned everything.
I pulled the emergency lever beside the wall. Metal barriers dropped at both ends of the loading bay, trapping the van.
The driver accelerated anyway.
The van slammed into the barrier. Its windshield cracked. Security officers surrounded it.
Victoria stopped.
For one moment, she looked small beneath the harsh loading lights.
Then she opened the ledger box and pulled out a lighter.
“No!” I rushed her.
She sparked the flame.
I struck her wrist. The lighter flew under the van. She clawed at my face and grabbed my hair.
“You ungrateful little nobody,” she hissed. “We gave you a name.”
I shoved her back. “I had a name before I met you.”
She reached for the box again.
Grant came through the tunnel, coughing. He stepped between us.
“Mother, give it to me.”
Victoria stared at him. “You cannot protect her and keep your company.”
“My company is already gone, isn’t it?”
She said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Grant slowly took the box from her hands.
Then he turned to me.
For half a heartbeat, I thought he would give it over.
Instead, he ran to the van.
He punched the driver, pulled him from the seat, and climbed behind the wheel.
“Grant!” I shouted.
The damaged barrier had bent just enough to leave a narrow opening.
Grant forced the van through it, ripping metal from the side panels. Officers jumped away. The van shot up the service ramp into the night.
Victoria began laughing.
“He finally chose correctly.”
Police cuffed her.
I stood in the loading bay, soaked, bleeding, and furious.
Lena reached me moments later.
“Why would he take the forgery?” she asked.
“Because the forgery is not the only thing in that box.”
I had seen it when Victoria opened the lid.
Beneath the false ledger was a small silver key.
Henry Bennett’s key.
It opened a private vault under the museum archive.
A vault Grant had asked about three times during the past month.
Inside were the original contracts connecting Bennett Capital to decades of illegal art sales.
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Grant was not running to save the forged ledger.
He was racing to destroy the evidence that could send him to prison.
