Chapter 20: The Door Nobody Used

Vaughn had spent nine years learning every door on Devil's Isle, and he had never thought he would use one to break in.

The smuggler from the northern docks lent them his helicopter and his pilot.

They flew low over a black sea with no lights on, and Vaughn sat with his back against the bulkhead and his hand pressed to the bandage.

Marguerite sat beside Astrid with a blanket around her shoulders, and she had refused the hospital twice.

"He is my husband," she had said on the roof. "I will see where they put him."

Astrid sat across from Vaughn with a map on her knee.

It was the map he had drawn for her on the back of a menu.

"The helipad inside the walls is out," he said. "The tower guards would spot us two miles away."

"The front gate?"

"You blew it up, and now it has a new one. It's twice as thick, and there are six men on it."

"Then how?"

"There is a door I have never seen open," he said.

She looked up.

"It is at the foot of the cliff, at sea level. The old supply boats used to dock there before the harbor was built on the north side."

"Why have I never heard of it?"

"Because it's bolted from the inside, and it hasn't been used in thirty years. No prisoner ever got near it, and no guard ever needed it."

"A door you can only open from inside."

"A bolt," Vaughn said. "It's rusted. I filed a report on it four times. The warden told me to stop wasting paper."

Astrid's mouth twitched.

"He told you that."

"Four times."

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