Chapter 4 - Dark Waters of Merritt Point
The realization hit Bennett with the icy precision of a dive into arctic water. Victor Hales hadn’t just sent Declan Cross—the Snake Man. He had deployed a containment cell.
"Step back," Bennett whispered to June, gently guiding her and Willa behind the heavy industrial ice machine in the corner of the storage room. "Sit on the floor. Hands over Willa’s ears."
Willa looked up at him, her lips trembling, but she didn't cry out. "Daddy, be careful."
"Always, bug," Bennett said, offering her a faint, reassuring wink that belied the lethal calculations running through his mind.
He turned back to the steel door. The deadbolt was thrown, but the heavy steel crossbar was resting in its brackets. Through the narrow gap at the bottom of the door, a faint shadow blocked the reflection of the alley light.
One man. Positioned outside the threshold. Likely armed with a suppressed sidearm or submachine gun, waiting for the front team to flush them out the rear exit.
Bennett had three seconds before the front window blew.
He didn't wait.
He reached up, grabbed the heavy iron security bar, and wrenched it upward with explosive force. The sound of metal grating on metal rang out. Bennett didn't kick the door; he used his shoulder and his full two-hundred-and-twenty-pound mass to drive the heavy steel slab outward with terrifying velocity.
*CRACK.*
The door slammed open like an artillery breach, striking the man waiting in the alley squarely in the face and chest. A muffled grunt of agony echoed through the rain as the operative was thrown backward into the sodden cardboard boxes piled against the brick wall across the alley.
Bennett exploded through the doorway into the freezing rain.
The operative was already recovering—a disciplined mercenary wearing a black rain jacket and ballistic vest, a suppressed Glock 19 slipping from his numbed fingers. He reached for a backup blade at his chest rig.
Bennett closed the distance before the man could draw. His left hand seized the operative's collar, jerking him forward, while his right palm drove upward into the man’s chin—a brutal, concussive palm-heel strike that snapped the operative’s head back against the brickwork. Before the man could fall, Bennett delivered a short, vicious knee strike to his sternum, driving the air from his lungs. The operative collapsed into the wet gravel, unconscious.
Bennett scooped up the dropped Glock, stripped the magazine, racked the slide to eject the chambered round into the mud, and tossed the useless frame into a dumpster.
"June! Move!" Bennett barked.
June sprinted through the doorway, her arms wrapped tightly around Willa. Koda bounded out beside them, his teeth bared, scanning the alley corners.
June’s blue F-150 was parked ten feet away, nose pointed toward the western exit of the alley. She hit the key fob. The headlights flashed once.
"Get in the back with Willa!" Bennett ordered, opening the driver's door and throwing June the keys. "No—I'm driving. You navigate. Where can we go that isn't connected to me, to Elise, or to your public records?"
June scrambled into the front passenger seat, pulling Willa onto her lap as Koda leaped into the rear cab with a heavy thud. Bennett slid behind the wheel, slammed the door, and cranked the 5.0-liter engine to life.
As the truck surged forward, Bennett glanced into the rearview mirror.
At the mouth of the alley, two figures in dark gear appeared through the sheets of rain. One of them raised a long gun—a compact carbine.
"Down!" Bennett roared, stomping on the accelerator.
The truck's rear tires broke traction on the wet grease of the alley, then bit into the pavement with a scream of burning rubber. A series of sharp, rhythmic cracks—like a staple gun punched into heavy cardboard—snapped against the tailgate. The rear window of the truck shattered into a web of frosted glass, but the heavy steel bodywork absorbed the brunt of the rounds.
Bennett cranked the wheel hard to the right, sliding the truck out of the narrow alley and onto the secondary access road just as a black SUV lunged forward to cut them off.
Bennett didn't swerve. He leaned into the throttle. The heavy chrome bumper of the F-150 struck the front quarter-panel of the intercepting SUV with a bone-jarring impact. Airbags didn't deploy, but the smaller SUV was spun violently across the slick asphalt, crashing sideways into a line of steel donation bins.
The road ahead was clear. Bennett gunned the engine, tearing away from the commercial strip and plunging into the dark, labyrinthine marsh roads of coastal Virginia.
"June," Bennett breathed, his hands working the wheel with surgical calmness as he killed the truck’s headlights and ran on the amber fog lamps alone. "Where to?"
June sat up slowly, brushing safety glass from her sleeves. Willa was buried in her chest, trembling violently, but unharmed.
"My grandfather," June said, her voice steadying through sheer will. "He was an oyster harvester out on Back Bay. He left me an old sorting shack on the marsh off Blackwater Road. No power. No address on modern maps. It's five miles into the reeds, accessible only by a dirt levee that washes out in high tide."
May you like
Bennett checked his mirrors. The dark highway behind them was empty, save for the dancing ribbons of rain and the distant, frantic glow of red emergency lights heading toward the strip mall they had just vacated.
"Lead the way," Bennett said.
