Chapter 29 - The Blackout on Bridge Street
Hayes shrieked—a high, agonized, inhuman sound—as the steel barrel of the pen struck bone and jammed through flesh into the tabletop.
He stumbled backward, clutching his pinned hand, blood spraying across the custody papers, his face turning an ash-gray color of pure shock.
"ALARM! GUARD! CODE RED!" he screamed, his voice cracking into a ragged wheeze.
I didn't wait for the guards to open the door. I threw my entire weight against the stainless-steel table, shoving it violently forward into Hayes’s shins. The heavy metal edge caught his knees, knocking him off balance. He collapsed backward against the one-way glass mirror with a sickening crack, shattering the reinforced pane into a web of white fractures.
Before he could pull his sidearm from his hip holster with his uninjured hand, I dove over the table.
I wasn't thinking. I wasn't Sarah the suburban mother, Sarah the grieving widow, Sarah the broke tenant. I was a feral animal whose cub was being carried to the slaughterhouse.
I smashed my chained wrists down across the bridge of his nose with everything I had.
Hayes went limp with a choked grunt, his eyes rolling back, his head thumping heavily against the baseboard.
The corridor outside exploded with alarms. Red emergency lights began strobing through the ceiling grates, casting the room in rhythmic waves of crimson.
*Warning: Facility lockdown initiated. Section 4 security breach.*
I dropped to my knees beside Hayes’s unconscious body. My hands were slick with his blood, but my fingers moved with frantic precision. I tore his keycard from his belt clip, unhooked his sidearm—a standard-issue Sig Sauer 9mm—and snatched the ring of brass master keys from his coat pocket.
I jammed the smallest brass key into the lock of my handcuffs.
*Click.*
The steel bracelets sprang open. I rubbed my raw, bloody wrists for half a second before racking the slide of the Sig Sauer, chambering a hollow-point round just as the heavy lock on the interrogation door buzzed to disengage.
The door swung inward.
A guard in gray tactical fatigues stepped through, his weapon drawn.
I didn't hesitate. I didn't wait to be shot. I lunged from behind the door, slamming the heavy steel frame into his shoulder, sending him stumbling sideways into the wall. I drove the butt of the Sig Sauer hard into the side of his tactical helmet, sweeping his boots out from under him. He went down hard on the linoleum, groaning as the wind was knocked out of him.
I grabbed his tactical radio from his vest, kicked his rifle down the hall, and sprinted.
"All units, suspect has breached corridor B-4! Suspect is armed!" the radio squawked against my chest.
I ran down the stark, fluorescent corridor toward the sub-level utility exit Chen had subtly circled on the fire-escape map hanging on the wall of the interrogation room.
I swiped Hayes’s card at the heavy industrial crash-bar door.
*BEEP.*
The magnetic lock released with a heavy clunk. I shoved the door open and plunged into the cold, torrential rain of the Virginia midnight.
The annex backed directly into an alleyway behind Bridge Street—a rotting industrial corridor of brick warehouses, shipping containers, and steam vents near the train tracks. Rain hammered down in blinding, vertical sheets, soaking my clothes in seconds, washing the blood from my knuckles.
Ahead of me, idling in the shadows beneath an abandoned rail trestle, sat a battered blue Ford pickup with rust-eaten fenders.
The headlights flickered twice.
My heart seized. Was it Victoria’s men? Was it Hayes’s backup?
The driver’s side door creaked open. A man stepped out into the pouring rain, pulling a dark hood over a bandaged head.
"Sarah! Over here! Move!"
It was Chen.
I didn't stop to ask how he had escaped custody or how he had found this truck. I crossed the flooded asphalt in a full sprint, diving into the passenger seat just as the squeal of tactical sirens echoed from the end of Bridge Street.
Chen slammed the truck into gear, the tires spinning on the slick wet cobblestones before catching traction and launching us into the dark labyrinth of back alleys.
"Hayes is down," I panted, wiping the rain and sweat from my eyes, holding the gun tight against my ribs. "He tried to force me to sign."
"I know," Chen said, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were chalk-white. "I tapped his internal comms before they took my badge. Look in the back."
I spun around in the cab, looking through the narrow rear glass into the truck bed beneath the black vinyl tarp.
Tied down securely with heavy ratchet straps was the bright purple bicycle.
The white basket was still attached, dripping with rainwater. The white and lavender streamers were plastered against the purple metal tubing, sodden and still, but intact.
"You got it," I gasped, tears finally breaking through my exhaustion. "You got the bike."
"I got the bike," Chen said grimly. "And I got the decryption key out of the crank housing before Hayes’s team raided the evidence locker."
He pulled a heavy, waterproof silver thumb drive from his pocket and threw it onto my lap.
"What does this mean?" I asked, staring at the small piece of metal. "Can we get Lily back with this? Can we expose Victoria?"
Chen didn't answer immediately. He took a hard, sharp left turn onto the Bridge Street overpass, cutting through the dense wall of rain. Down below in the harbor, police cruisers and federal black SUVs were swarming the access docks, their blue and red lights fracturing across the dark water like broken glass.
"That drive doesn't just expose Victoria Vance, Sarah," Chen said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. "I ran the preliminary decryption on the files while I was waiting for you in the alley."
"And?"
Chen looked at me, his face illuminated by the eerie green glow of the dashboard lights, his expression carved from stone.
"Thomas didn't put those files in Lily’s bike to expose Victoria," Chen whispered.
"What are you talking about? You said he was your informant!"
"He was," Chen replied, his jaw twitching violently. "Until three weeks before he died. When he realized that Victoria wasn't the head of the syndicate. She was just the banker."
The truck's radio suddenly crackled with static, the frequency overriding our cab speakers with a high-pitched, digital tone.
Then, a voice came through the dashboard.
Not Victoria’s voice.
Not Hayes’s voice.
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It was a man’s voice—deep, calm, and undeniably familiar. A voice that had whispered bedtime stories to Lily every night for five years. A voice I had mourned over an empty casket in a Cape May cemetery two years ago.
*"Sarah,"* the radio hummed softly through the storm. *"You shouldn't have opened the crank housing. Leave the bike on the bridge, Sarah. Or Lily won't make it to sunrise."*
