Chapter 4 - THE TRAP AT RIVER NORTH
"Are you insane?" Lucian hissed, not moving. "That thing could have an accelerometer. If you tilt it—"
"Sophie said he cut the lining and dropped it in," Dante snapped, his mind working with crystalline clarity. "It’s a command detonation, not a tilt switch. If Marcus had a radio remote, it’s an RF trigger. If we leave it here, the whole north wing collapses onto the cellar vaults where the Alvarez family is sheltering."
Dante didn't wait for an answer. He moved to the table with fluid, lethal focus. He didn't touch the ribbon. He slid his hands beneath the solid base of the lacquered box, lifting it with perfectly level palms. It weighed roughly eight pounds. Heavy. C-4 packed with ball bearings, designed to shred everyone in the ballroom within fifty feet.
"Lucian! Get Clara and Sophie out through the service conduit to the armored Suburban behind the stables. Go!"
Lucian spat a curse, grabbed Marcus by his hair, dragged him three feet, cuffed his working arm to a cast-iron radiator pipe, and sprinted toward the kitchen.
Dante walked. He did not run. Running meant sudden deceleration, erratic motion, mistakes.
He carried the black box through the shattered glass of the side terrace doors, stepping out into the freezing Chicago rain. The wind whipped his hair across his eyes, cold water soaking through his dress shirt instantly.
Across the lawn, three hundred yards away, the perimeter fence ran along the bluffs overlooking the dark, churning waters of the drainage canal that led out to Lake Michigan.
In his earpiece, the estate comms crackled to life.
"Dante!" It was Lucian’s voice, breathing hard over the static. "We're in the tunnel. Clara is with me. Sophie is safe. But Dante—we found Marcus’s cell phone on the floor. There's a live ping tracking Marcus's coordinates from an unmarked black van parked on the access road by the canal bridge!"
"They're waiting for the explosion," Dante said, his boots sinking into the wet turf as he marched toward the bluffs. "They’re visual on the house."
"Drop the box and take cover!"
"If it blows on the lawn, the shockwave takes out the ground-floor structural pillars. The whole south terrace will drop into the foundation."
Dante reached the edge of the stone seawall. Below him, thirty feet down, the black, industrial water of the canal surged against concrete pylons, swollen with spring run-off and sleet.
Through the rain-streaked darkness, Dante spotted it: two hundred yards down the access lane, headlights dark, an unmarked Ford Transit van was parked with its engine idling. The exhaust bloomed white in the freezing night air.
Inside that van was the finger on the trigger.
Dante didn't throw the box. A sudden drop might trigger an internal pressure plate if the builder was thorough. He set it gently down on the wide stone lip of the seawall.
Then he drew his personal weapon—a custom Kimber 1911 .45 ACP from his shoulder holster.
He didn't shoot the box. That was an amateur's death sentence.
Instead, Dante sighted down the wet barrel, through the driving rain, aiming at the driver-side windshield of the Ford Transit across the access lane.
Two hundred yards was an impossible pistol shot for most men. But Dante Moretti had spent four years in the 75th Ranger Regiment before his father died and dragged him back into the family bloodline. He exhaled, feeling the slow, heavy thrum of his pulse. He compensated for the crosswind blowing off the lake.
Three shots. Heavy, thunderous cracks that echoed against the concrete canal walls.
*Crack. Crack. Crack.*
The van's driver-side window imploded. A silhouette inside jerked violently forward.
A second later, inside the van, an panicked hand must have slammed down on the remote console.
Behind Dante, on the seawall, the lacquered box let out a high-pitched, electronic squeal.
*Beep. Beep. Beep.*
Dante didn't hesitate. With one brutal kick of his heel, he launched the eight-pound wooden box off the stone wall and into the empty air above the deep, rushing waters of the canal.
He dove flat against the muddy turf, hands covering his head.
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Two seconds later, the world turned white.
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