Chapter 5 - THE FROZEN BRIDGE
Vivian slammed on the brakes.
The Explorer skidded sideways across a sheet of black ice, spinning thirty degrees before the anti-lock brakes caught and brought the heavy vehicle to a shuddering halt just ten feet behind a battered blue pickup truck.
The pickup’s hazard lights were clicking with a slow, dying rhythm. The driver’s side door hung wide open, catching the full fury of the lake wind, swinging back and forth on its hinges like a broken arm.
Vivian threw open her door, the wind instantly ripping it from her grip and slamming it against the fender with a metallic crack. She scrambled out into the freezing gale, her boots sinking ankle-deep into the drifted snow.
"Daniel!" she screamed.
Her voice was instantly shredded and carried away by the wind.
She stumbled forward, her breath coming in ragged, freezing gasps, her lungs burning as if she had inhaled fire. She reached the side of the pickup and grabbed the open door to steady herself.
The cab was empty.
"Daniel!" she cried out again, spinning around in the blinding white void.
Nothing. Just the howling wind and the metallic groan of the old iron railway bridge spanning the frozen canal fifty yards ahead.
Panic—cold, sharp, and absolute—gripped her chest. Had he gone off the bridge? Had the cold disoriented him?
And then she saw a dark figure stumbling across the footbridge approach, bent double against the wind, carrying a familiar black leather briefcase under one arm.
Daniel Mercer was walking toward the old maintenance control shanty nestled at the base of the bridge—the manual relay station that controlled the auxiliary bypass valves for the entire northern industrial grid, including Lakefront Dynamics.
He hadn't gone home.
He had realized, out there in the freezing dark, that even though the company had cast him out, the automated override system at the plant would fail safely only if someone initiated the manual bleed-off valve from the remote grid station.
May you like
He was going back to fix their mistake, at the risk of his own life.
Vivian didn't think. She pushed off from the truck and lunged into the snowdrift, chasing the dark silhouette disappearing into the blinding white storm.
