The Sacrifice

Declan dropped to his knees beside her. He checked the cuffs. High-grade steel. Not something she could have slipped.

"Who left you?" Declan asked, reaching for the bolt cutters he had clipped to his belt.

"Kael," she gasped. "My grandfather's man. He brought me down here an hour ago. He chained me."

Declan froze. "Thorne said you ran away. He said you stole a drive."

"There is no drive!" Ivy screamed, her eyes wide with hysteria. "It's a lie. He's dying, and he's paranoid. He thinks I talked to the feds about the shipping containers. The smuggling. He wants me dead, but he can't do it at the house. He needs an accident."

Declan felt the cold settle into his stomach, heavier than the ocean. It wasn't a rescue. It was a disposal. Thorne had sent him down here to find a corpse, or maybe to die trying.

* SNAP.*

Declan cut the chain. Ivy fell forward into his arms, shivering violently.

"We have to go," Declan said. "The water is rising."

He looked back at the ledge where he had surfaced. The water was already higher. The sump was fully submerged.

"I can't swim that," Ivy cried. "I can't hold my breath that long."

Declan looked at her. She was terrified, frail. She reminded him so much of the boy. The helplessness.

"I'm not leaving you," Declan said. The vow felt ancient, coming from a part of him he thought had died with his badge. "I promise. Not this time."

He scanned the cave. The water was rising fast, lapping at their boots.

"Is there another way out?" Declan asked. "Think, Ivy. You played here as a kid?"

"The blowhole," she whispered. "There's a fissure in the roof. It leads up to the old smuggling tunnels. Under the estate."

Declan shone his light up. Thirty feet above them, a crack in the stone revealed a sliver of darkness that wasn't rock.

"Can we climb it?"

"It's steep."

"We climb," Declan said. "Or we drown."