Chapter 5 - Uncovering the Sabotage
Richard Vance stopped pacing. The two armed contractors instantly raised their suppressed pistols, aiming directly at Logan's chest.
"Ah," Richard smiled smoothly, resting both hands on his silver-headed cane. "The local mechanic. Mr. Pierce, isn't it? I read your file on the drive down from Palo Alto. Former Navy Special Warfare. Decorated service. Pity you retired to fix tractors."
"You're trespassing on private property, Vance," Logan said, holding his Sig Sauer at a low-ready position behind his thigh, concealed by the angle of his body. "And you brought two mercenaries into a civilian shop."
"I brought corporate security to retrieve an endangered minor," Richard corrected pleasantly. "Put whatever redneck weapon you're holding on the floor, Mr. Pierce, and walk away. This isn't your fight."
"You made it my fight when you tucked that little girl behind a hedge in Carmel," Logan said.
In the fraction of a second that followed, Logan didn't aim his weapon at the guards.
He slammed his boot into the heavy foot-pedal of his main hydraulic shop press.
A two-hundred-pound steel counterweight released from the overhead crane rig, dropping six feet into a rack of heavy oxygen-acetylene tanks.
CLANG-BANG!
A deafening rupture of pressurized gas exploded across the workshop bay, sending a white cloud of compressed air and metal dust blasting through the room like a flashbang grenade.
The lead guard panicked, jerking his trigger. A suppressed round buried itself harmlessly into the wooden wall behind Logan.
Logan moved like a shadow through the dust cloud.
He closed eight feet of concrete floor before the second guard could clear his line of sight. Logan grabbed the guard's gun wrist, twisting it violently inward until the radius bone snapped with a wet pop. The man shrieked, dropping the gun, but Logan didn't stop. He drove a short-range elbow strike directly into the guard's sternum, dropping him instantly into a unconscious heap on the floor.
The first guard swung his barrel toward Logan, but Logan was already beneath his sightline. Logan swept the man's forward leg with a heavy boot heel, sending him crashing backward onto the corner of the welding table. The guard hit the steel frame hard, his eyes rolling back as he went limp.
Four seconds. Two armed men neutralized.
Logan turned slowly toward Richard Vance.
The silver-haired executive stood frozen, his smooth composure shattered into a million jagged pieces. His hand was trembling as he fumbled inside his jacket for a small pocket pistol.
Logan walked forward, his heavy boots crunching over shattered glass. He reached out, grabbed the barrel of Richard's pocket pistol before the older man could raise it, and squeezed his hand shut.
The cheap slide pinched into Richard's flesh. Richard gasped in pain, dropping the gun onto the concrete.
Logan didn't punch him. He simply grabbed Richard by his silk tie, pulled him down until their noses were six inches apart, and looked into his eyes with a cold, absolute deadness that made the billionaire's stomach turn to ice.
"The girl stays here," Logan whispered.
Logan dragged Richard across the shop, shoved him into a heavy metal storage locker, slammed the door shut, and jammed a steel iron rod through the handle latches.
He walked back to the office door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.
Eleanor sat on the floor, holding Maya in her arms, both of them staring at Logan with wide, stunned eyes.
"Is... is it over?" Eleanor choked out.
"The shop is secure for now," Logan said, re-engaging the safety on his pistol and holstering it. "But Richard's team knows you're here. We have twenty minutes before more of his people show up."
He picked up Maya's wheelchair, setting it smoothly on the ground, then lifted the little girl into the seat with the gentle precision of a father carrying his own child.
"Where are we going?" Eleanor asked, scrambling to her feet.
Logan grabbed his leather duffel bag from the corner of the office—the one that held his tactical equipment, medical kits, and satellite communications gear.
"My home," Logan said. "Up in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's off the grid, reinforced, and I have friends who still remember how to answer an encrypted satellite call."
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He looked at Maya, who was holding her mechanical bird tightly against her chest.
"Let's go unmask a killer, Maya," Logan said softly.
