Chapter 9 - The Final Bargain
I stood completely still as the sniper's laser burned brightly into my soaked shirt.
Eleanor walked down the metal stairs confidently to retrieve the discarded drive.
She picked it up off the concrete with a triumphant, evil smile on her face.
"You really are a genuinely good man, Sebastian, and that is exactly why you lose," she said softly.
She raised the remote to drop my daughters into the freezing water anyway.
Suddenly, a deafening gunshot echoed powerfully through the empty warehouse.
The sniper's laser completely vanished from my chest in an instant.
Eleanor screamed in pain as the remote control was shot right out of her hand.
I looked toward the warehouse entrance and saw Nick leaning heavily against a yellow forklift.
He was holding a smoking rifle, barely standing on his bleeding feet.
I didn't waste a single second of the distraction.
I threw the steel crowbar directly at Eleanor's legs, knocking her violently to the ground.
I scrambled up the steep metal stairs and hit the manual override switch for the industrial crane.
The gears ground loudly as my daughters were safely pulled back onto solid ground.
I rapidly untied them and pulled them into a fierce, desperate hug while they cried into my shoulder.
We hurried down the stairs to where Nick had Eleanor pinned firmly at gunpoint.
"It is officially over, Eleanor," Nick said, dialing the police on his cell phone.
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Eleanor looked up at me from the dirt with a twisted, chilling grin.
"It is never over for people like us," she whispered as police sirens wailed loudly in the distance.
