Chapter 5 - Bloodlines and Betrayals
The tall man didn't flinch. He was a seasoned operator, his reflexes honed by years of wet work for corporate fixers.
Before Daniel could pull the trigger, the man threw himself sideways behind the heavy cast-iron wheel-balancing machine. The thin man by the door raised his suppressed pistol, spitting three silent, deadly rounds into the concrete floor inches from Daniel’s feet, sending sharp chips of stone spraying into the air.
*BOOM!*
Daniel fired the Remington.
The roar of the 12-gauge inside the enclosed garage was deafening. The blast shattered the front plate-glass window of the office into ten thousand glittering shards, sending a hail of buckshot ripping through the drywall where the second shooter was standing.
The thin man screamed, clutching his shoulder as he was thrown backward out the broken door onto the icy gravel.
"Down!" the tall man shouted, blind-firing two rounds around the edge of the balancing machine.
One bullet tore through the sleeve of Daniel’s canvas jacket, grazing the flesh of his bicep like a hot iron. Daniel didn't feel the pain—the adrenaline surging through his veins turned the world into slow, hyper-focused motion.
He knew this shop better than any man alive. He knew every blind corner, every trip wire, every tool that could be turned into a weapon.
Daniel grabbed a five-gallon pressurized canister of brake cleaner from the workbench, hooked it over his arm, and kicked the release valve on the main acetylene torch tank beside the welding station. A hiss of combustible gas began to fill the lower quadrant of the shop floor.
"You can't hold out here, Mercer!" the tall man shouted, his voice tight now, the professional calm beginning to crack. "There are four more men in the SUV! If I don't walk out with that drive, they burn this whole building to the ground with everyone inside!"
"Then let's burn it together," Daniel yelled back.
Daniel pulled the Colt .45 from his waistband with his left hand, aimed at the concrete three feet in front of the acetylene line, and fired two rounds into the floor.
Sparks erupted.
A sheet of blue-and-orange flame exploded across the oil-soaked floor, roaring up like a wall of fire between Daniel and the balancing machine.
The tall man cursed violently, coughing as the thick, acrid smoke of burning motor oil and chemical cleaner filled the room. Blinded by the sudden wall of flame, he lunged toward the broken office door to escape the inferno.
Daniel stepped through the smoke like a ghost.
He swung the heavy steel barrel of the shotgun like a baseball bat, catching the man full in the side of the head. The impact produced a sickening, dull thud. The tall man crumpled instantly to the concrete, his pistol clattering across the floor into the gutter drain.
Daniel stood over him, chest heaving, his face black with soot. He kicked the man’s limp body over, searched his pockets, and pulled out a heavy encrypted radio and an electronic keycard embossed with a discreet silver logo: *VANCE STRATEGIC ASSETS*.
From the street outside, tires screeched.
Daniel sprinted to the shattered window, raising the shotgun.
The dark gray SUV had already thrown itself into reverse. The driver, seeing the fire roaring through the front windows and his point man unconscious on the floor, didn't hesitate. The SUV whipped a violent 180-degree turn in the street, spraying slush twenty feet into the air, and roared away toward the expressway, leaving the wounded thin man crawling in the snow.
Daniel didn't shoot. He stood in the falling snow, the cold air rushing into his scorched lungs, watching the red taillights vanish into the blizzard.
Silence descended upon 24th Street, broken only by the crackle of the dying flames behind him.
Daniel immediately grabbed a dry-chemical fire extinguisher from the wall and sprayed down the burning oil on the floor, smothering the flames until the shop was filled with nothing but white powder and thick, gray smoke.
"Marcus!" Daniel bellowed toward the ceiling. "Clear!"
The heavy steel fire door opened slowly.
Marcus Ramos crept down the stairs, holding a heavy tire iron, followed closely by Lucy. The girl’s eyes were wide as saucers, taking in the shattered glass, the unconscious man on the floor, and the white powder coating the garage.
She looked at Daniel. Her eyes dropped to his left arm, where blood was soaking through his torn jacket.
"You're hurt," she cried, running to his side.
"Just a scratch, Lucy," Daniel said, his voice rough. "It looks worse than it is."
Marcus hurried over, checking the unconscious hitman’s pulse with two fingers on his neck. "He's alive, but he's out cold. Concussion, broken zygomatic arch. Daniel, they're going to come back. And next time, they won't send two men. Vance will send an army, or he'll send dirty cops with a warrant."
Daniel walked over to his workbench, leaning his heavy hands against the scarred wood. He looked at the tarnished silver locket sitting on the table, where Sarah had placed it before being moved upstairs.
"We can't run," Daniel said, his voice flat and hard. "You run from men like Julian Vance, you die in an alley ten years later like Sarah almost did. You spend your life looking over your shoulder, watching your kids starve because you're too scared to register for food stamps."
He turned to Marcus. "Is Sarah stable enough to travel?"
"Travel where?" Marcus asked, wrapping a clean strip of gauze tightly around Daniel’s bleeding arm. "Every airport and train station will be flagged if Miller still has his contacts in the department."
"We're not leaving Chicago," Daniel said, picking up the locket and turning it over in his calloused fingers. "We're going to the one place Julian Vance thinks is already dead and buried."
Lucy looked up at him. "Where?"
Daniel looked down into his niece’s eyes—Thomas’s eyes.
May you like
"To the old Mercer Ironworks in the Calumet Basin. The place where your father built his first computer server. The place where the original backup is buried."
***
