Chapter 2 - Blood on the Ballistics
The silence between the concrete pillars felt thicker than the smoke rising from the collapsed security van.
Emma could feel the steady, heavy beat of Gabriel's pulse through the short link of chain connecting their wrists.
He did not tremble, which infuriated her almost as much as his arrogance.
Normal civilians panicked, screamed, or froze when high-caliber rounds chipped concrete above their heads.
Gabriel Russo simply recalculated his breathing and adjusted his stance to compensate for her smaller frame.
"We move on three," Gabriel instructed, his eyes fixed on the reflective undercarriage of a parked sedan.
"We are not moving toward the elevator," Emma whispered back sharply.
"Thomas is thirty yards behind us, bleeding out on a cold deck with a rookie partner who has never managed a tension pneumothorax alone."
"If we go back into that clearing, your rookie partner will be treating two corpses instead of one delivery driver."
"He isn't just a delivery driver, he has three daughters and a badge that says priority transport!"
Gabriel turned his head, his face inches from hers.
"And I have six thousand dockworkers whose livelihoods depend on me walking out of this garage alive tonight."
"Then you can explain that to his daughters when his heart stops from hypovolemia!"
A bullet shattered the rear windshield of the sedan directly in front of them, showering their coats with safety glass beads.
Gabriel didn't flinch; he dropped cleanly to one knee, dragging Emma down with him into the shadow of the tire well.
"Keep your head below the wheel rim," he ordered, his arm locking over hers to absorb the tension of the chain.
"I know how ballistics work, Russo, I've dug enough slugs out of teenagers on 63rd Street."
"Good, then stop fighting my center of gravity."
Across the driving lane, Marcus, Gabriel’s head of personal security, broke cover from behind a utility dumpster.
Marcus was a broad-shouldered man in a dark tactical windbreaker, carrying a Glock 17 low against his thigh.
He scanned the upper catwalks with the practiced paranoia of a veteran contractor.
When his eyes locked onto Gabriel and Emma huddled together beside the wheel well, his professional stoicism cracked completely.
"Boss?" Marcus called out in a sharp, incredulous whisper.
"Tell me you are not chained to a municipal paramedic."
"Focus on the threat, Marcus," Gabriel said coldly, not moving an inch.
"Did you eliminate the shooter on the west mezzanine?"
"He relocated toward the ventilation shaft," Marcus replied, moving in a low crouch until he reached their pillar.
"The backup team was supposed to be here five minutes ago, but the city transit dispatch routed CPD away from this block."
Emma stared at the security chief, her medical mind connecting the institutional anomalies.
"The city dispatch doesn't reroute units unless there is a four-alarm emergency or a direct administrative override."
Marcus gave her an assessing, cold glance.
"She's sharp."
"She's loud," Gabriel corrected, holding up their joined wrists.
"Unlock this, Marcus, before she tries to perform field surgery on my forearm."
Marcus reached into his tactical vest pocket and pulled out a standard universal handcuff key.
"Hold still, both of you."
He slotted the key into Emma's cuff first, turning the cylinder counter-clockwise.
The internal pawl clicked, the double lock disengaged, and the ratchet slid free from her reddened, bruised skin.
Emma immediately snatched her left hand back, rubbing the raw impression the steel had left in her skin.
She did not wait for Gabriel to adjust his cuffs or offer a polite thank-you.
She turned on her heel and sprinted back toward the open bay where Thomas Reed was lying on the stretcher.
"Emma, get back here!" Gabriel’s voice cracked like a whip behind her.
She ignored him completely, dropping back to her knees beside Greg, who was sweating through his high-visibility jacket.
"Vitals?" Emma demanded, her fingers already finding Thomas’s carotid pulse.
"BP is 85 over 50, pulse is thready at 130," Greg stuttered, his hands shaking as he held a saline bag.
"The bleeding stopped from the leg, but he's complaining of crushing chest pain and abdominal rigidity."
Emma ripped open Thomas’s jacket, exposing his pale, clammy chest.
There was severe seatbelt ecchymosis across the sternum, but worse was the paradoxical movement of his lower rib cage.
"He has a flail segment and internal thoracic bleeding," Emma said, grabbing a chest seal and a large-bore needle.
Heavy footsteps approached from behind, and Gabriel knelt down directly across from her on the bloody pavement.
"Why are you still here?" Emma snapped without looking up, prepping the needle for decompression.
"You're free, go run your criminal empire."
"Marcus is clearing the main ramp, and I don't leave debts unpaid," Gabriel said, his tone devoid of warmth.
He reached out with a gloved hand and stabilized Thomas’s shoulder, keeping the convulsing man from rolling off the board.
"Hold that clavicle down," Emma ordered, slipping into pure clinical command mode.
Gabriel did not hesitate, applying forty pounds of steady downward pressure without a single complaint.
Thomas’s eyes fluttered open, glassy with shock and the haze of failing cerebral perfusion.
He looked at Gabriel’s crisp collar, then at Emma’s blood-spattered medical shears.
"Are you two... together?" Thomas wheezed, his lips tinged with cyanotic blue.
"We are strictly professional acquaintances through mutual misfortune," Emma said, plunging the decompression needle into the second intercostal space.
A sharp hiss of trapped air and dark venous blood escaped the catheter, relieving the tension in the chest cavity.
Thomas gasped, taking his first full, unhindered breath in twenty minutes.
"Good work," Gabriel murmured, his eyes lingering on Emma's precise, clinical hands.
"Save your compliments for someone who values your opinion," Emma retorted, securing the catheter with surgical tape.
Marcus jogged back into the bay, his face pale despite the freezing subterranean draft.
"Gabriel, we have a catastrophic problem."
Gabriel stood up slowly, smoothing the lapels of his coat as if he had not just been pinned down by automatic weapons.
"Define catastrophic, Marcus."
"Daniel’s personal burner phone was recovered near the trash compactor on ramp B."
"Was he executed?" Gabriel’s voice was devoid of emotion, but his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
"No sign of violence, no blood, no defensive struggle," Marcus reported grimly.
"The internal garage cameras were wiped from the central substation three minutes before the prisoner transfer collided with us."
"A system wipe requires administrative clearance from Vanguard Security," Gabriel noted coldly.
"Vanguard holds the security contract for the city terminals and the municipal courts," Emma said, looking up from Thomas.
"My ambulance district shares radio towers with their dispatch vehicles."
Marcus looked down at Emma with newfound respect and deepening dread.
"Then your dispatch was hijacked from the inside, paramedic."
Gabriel stepped closer to his security chief, his presence radiating an aura of suppressed violence.
"Where is my driver now, Marcus?"
Marcus swallowed hard, glancing toward the entrance where the sirens of delayed city responders were finally wailing.
"The household security detail at the Lake Shore Drive estate just checked in over the secure satellite line."
"And?"
"Daniel is currently inside the family study," Marcus said, each word falling like lead.
"He arrived twenty minutes ago in a civilian vehicle registered to Vanguard's operations director."
Gabriel’s jaw hardened until the muscle twitched beneath his skin.
"And who authorized his entry past the gatehouse?"
Marcus hesitated, looking between Gabriel and Emma.
"Your younger brother, Julian."
"Julian?" Gabriel’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the terrifying weight of a death sentence.
"Julian was supposed to be in New York finalizing the maritime insurance merger."
"He took a private charter back at noon," Marcus said quietly.
"And according to the estate guards, he has called an emergency assembly of the family council for midnight."
Thomas groaned from the stretcher, coughing weakly as Emma adjusted his oxygen mask.
"I saw him..." Thomas whispered, his voice catching against the plastic mask.
Gabriel leaned down instantly, his tall frame bending over the wounded delivery driver.
"What did you see, Thomas?"
"Your driver... the man in the dark suit with the silver watch..." Thomas breathed, struggling for air.
"He was talking to the prisoner before the crash happened."
"Did he give him the handcuffs?" Gabriel asked, his voice deadly and quiet.
Thomas shook his head weakly, his eyes rolling back slightly.
"Not the cuffs... he gave him... the key."
Emma looked up at Gabriel, the horror of the realization hitting her all at once.
"The detainee didn't grab those cuffs by accident," Emma said, her voice trembling with anger.
"He was paid to lock you to whoever was standing nearby to ensure you couldn't escape this level before the hit team arrived."
Gabriel looked toward the open ramp where black smoke was curling into the neon night.
May you like
"They didn't just want me delayed, Cole."
"They wanted me dead in this garage while my brother sat in my father's chair."
