“My grandfather didn’t bury the defense of his country, Vanessa,” Olivia Eleanor Mercer whispered softly:
“**And your father forgot who holds the Title Fifty War Powers charter over this coast.**”
From the center aisle behind me, a deep, concussive voice boomed like heavy artillery:
“United States Marshals! Seal the exits! Nobody leaves this sanctuary!”
Stepping through the chapel doors, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page federal grand jury indictment stamped with the raised red-wax dry seal of the **DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY**…
Was **United States Attorney Marcus Cooper**!
Beside him stepped eighty-year-old Former Chief Justice **Arthur Sterling-Vance**—Vanessa’s grandfather—wrapped in an eight-thousand-dollar vicuña greatcoat, his serpent-headed cane trembling in his paralyzed hand!
Arthur Vance leveled his cane at the communion table, his cultured baritone cracking into pure, terrified mania:
**“SEVER THE SECONDARY CRYOGENIC NITROGEN FLANGE! THE TRANSIT KEYWAY IS IN THE CHAPEL! DETONATE VALVE STATION TEN BEFORE MIDNIGHT!”**
The words crackled through the vaulted acoustics of the Lakeview Hotel chapel with the concussive, hydrostatic shock of an eighty-pound iron depth charge rupturing an armored bulkhead.
