Chapter 5 - The Ambush at Foley Square
Vincent choked, his eyes rolling back as his hands scrabbled uselessly against my sleeve. "The... the harbor warehouse," he wheezed, blood flecking his lower lip. "Pier 42. He... he doesn't know you took the girl to Maya yet. He thinks... he thinks Marco is still tracking your car."
I didn't let him up. I kept the pressure exact—enough to starve his brain of oxygen without crushing the larynx completely.
"And Dr. Harrison?"
"At his... his private clinic on 68th," Vincent gasped. "He has the... the original lab records. Salvatore paid him to wipe the server tonight."
I released him. Vincent rolled off the desk, coughing violently on his hands and knees, clutching his fractured wrist against his ribs.
Vanessa was sobbing against the fireplace baseboards, her diamond ring catching the dim morning light. "Adrian, please. My father will kill me if he knows I talked. He’ll kill us all!"
"Your father isn't going to kill anyone," I said, reaching down and picking up Vincent’s dropped Sig Sauer. I checked the chamber, engaged the safety, and slid it into my coat. "Because before noon, every federal agent in the Southern District is going to have Dr. Harrison’s original toxicology reports."
I pulled out my satellite phone and hit Maya’s speed dial.
The phone rang twice. Then three times.
Four times.
A knot of cold iron tightened in my stomach. Maya never missed a ring.
On the fifth ring, the call connected, but there was no greeting. Only the sound of heavy breathing, followed by the distant, unmistakable crack of suppressed small-arms fire.
"Maya!" I barked. "Report!"
"Adrian..." Her voice was strained, breathless, coming from behind heavy cover. "Loading dock. Subterranean level. Two black vans... they weren't tracking your car. They were tracking *my* private physician's medical courier. They intercepted the swabs."
The world tilted on its axis.
"Where is Lily?"
"With me. In the vault room behind my desk. Kevlar-reinforced door. But they have breaching charges, Adrian. They’re wearing tactical gear without insignia. This isn't a shakedown. It's a clean sweep."
"How long can the door hold?"
"Three minutes. Maybe four. The local precinct is five blocks away, but someone called in a fake bomb threat at City Hall—the streets are locked in gridlock."
"Hold the door," I said, my voice dropping into an icy register that made Vincent look up from the floor in sheer terror. "I'm coming."
I ended the call, turned toward the corner gun safe behind the bookcase, and entered the master combination. The panel swung open, revealing four tactical assault rifles, three boxes of hollow-point ammunition, and two Kevlar vests.
"Adrian, you can't fight Salvatore’s contractors alone," Vincent rasped, trying to stand. "He hired the Chechen crew out of Brighton Beach! They don't leave survivors!"
I pulled a vest over my head, strapped the side panels tight, and jacked a round into the chamber of a shortened HK416 rifle.
"I'm not fighting them alone," I said, tossing a set of heavy steel handcuffs onto the carpet before him. "Cuff yourself to the radiator, Vincent."
"What?"
"Cuff yourself to the radiator, or I put a bullet through your kneecap right now and let you bleed out next to Vanessa's Earl Grey."
Vincent looked at my eyes, realized there wasn't a millimeter of bluff in my soul, and clicked the cuffs around the cast-iron steam pipe with trembling hands.
I turned to Vanessa. "Stay on the floor. If you touch a phone before I get to Foley Square, I won't need Maya Reyes to ruin your family. I will execute your father on live television."
I sprinted down the back stairs, hit the garage, and fired up the engine of my custom twin-turbocharged Dodge Charger—an armored pursuit vehicle kept for emergencies that Vincent didn't have the codes to track.
The garage door roared open. I tore into the Manhattan rain, tires screaming against wet asphalt, the engine howling like an animal unleashed from hell.
The drive from 72nd Street to Foley Square usually took twenty-five minutes in midday traffic.
I made it in eight.
I blew through red lights at Park Avenue, crossed the median at 23rd Street, and rocketed down Broadway with my high beams flashing and the siren behind my grille clearing yellow cabs out of the lane like dry leaves.
My mind wasn't thinking about the law. It wasn't thinking about the Moretti empire.
It was locked on a four-year-old girl holding a stuffed rabbit, waiting for the father who had arrived five years too late.
When I rounded the corner onto Maya’s block, smoke was already billowing from the subterranean loading dock. An unmarked black Sprinter van was idling at the curb, its rear doors swinging open. Two men in black balaclavas and tactical body armor were moving toward the elevator vestibule carrying a hydraulic ram.
I didn't tap the brakes.
May you like
I dropped the Charger into third gear, slammed the accelerator to the floorboards, and rammed the rear of the Sprinter van at fifty miles per hour.
***
