Chapter 7 - The Redbreak on Lake Shore Drive
The sharp crack of the Kimber .45 shattered the cavernous room an instant later.
Callum fired left-handed from the floor, his vision swimming with blinding white agony.
The heavy slug tore through Julian’s right thigh, dropping the architect to his knees with a choked scream of agony.
The silenced pistol skittered across the concrete, splashing into a shallow trench of runoff water.
Hazel scrambled across the floor on her hands and knees, ignoring the shattered glass, and kicked the weapon into the dark depths of the open storm pipe.
She threw herself down beside Callum, her hands pressing desperately against the torn wool of his shirt where dark, arterial red was already pooling over his collarbone.
“Callum!” she cried, her voice raw with terror.
“Stay still! Put pressure here!”
Callum gritted his teeth, the taste of copper rising in his mouth as he forced himself to sit upright against the cold iron casing of the water pump.
His right arm hung useless at his side, fire pulsing through his clavicle.
“Julian’s alive,” Callum grunted through clenched teeth, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
Across the floor, Julian was dragging his bleeding leg toward the rusted iron doorway, leaving a smeared trail of crimson across the dust.
“He’s going to Carmine,” Hazel said, tearing a wide strip from her silk blouse with trembling teeth and wrapping it tightly around Callum’s wound.
“If Carmine Bertinelli knows you survived the ambush at Pier 14, he will send every soldier he has to lock down the city.”
Callum looked up at her face, inches from his own.
Her hair had completely fallen from its pins, tumbling around her shoulders in dark, wet waves.
Her hands were covered in his blood.
Yet her eyes were completely clear, stripped of the vengeance that had poisoned her for a decade.
“You chose,” Callum whispered, his left hand reaching up to grasp her wrist.
Hazel paused, her fingers knotting the silk bandage tight enough to stem the flow.
“I spent three years watching you, Callum Sullivan.”
“I know the difference between a monster and a man who carries the weight of a monster’s sins.”
“Now shut up and lean on me before you bleed to death on this floor.”
She pulled his good arm over her shoulders, straining under his six-foot-two frame as she hauled him to his feet.
Callum groaned, his vision blacking out for two terrifying seconds before his boots found traction on the concrete.
Together, they limped out through the rusted rear exit toward the service road bordering the lake.
The wind was screaming off the water, driving needle-like sleet into their skin.
Fifty yards down the access lane, the headlights of Frank’s Ford sedan were still off.
Callum felt a sickening dread settle in his chest as they approached the driver’s side.
The door was ajar.
Frank Moretti was slumped over the steering wheel, his forehead resting against the horn ring.
“Frank,” Callum rasped, pulling the door fully open with his left hand.
The old man stirred with a low, agonizing groan.
His face was battered, purple contusions swelling across his eyes, but his chest was rising and falling in shallow, stubborn rhythms.
“Boss?” Frank wheezed, his one open eye squinting through the gloom.
“The architect... had two gorillas with him... thought they broke my neck... but I played dead like a dog in the weeds.”
“Can you drive, Frank?” Hazel asked, climbing into the passenger seat and reaching across to help him sit upright.
Frank spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the gravel outside.
“Lady, for you and the boss, I could drive this heap through the pearly gates.”
Callum collapsed into the rear seat, his head resting against the cold leather as Frank turned the ignition key.
The old V8 engine sputtered, caught, and roared to life.
Frank slammed the gear into reverse, spinning the sedan around on the icy gravel and launching it onto the rain-slicked ribbon of Lake Shore Drive.
Behind them, through the shattered rear window, Callum saw three sets of high-beam halogen headlights turn onto the boulevard from the Fullerton exit.
Black Cadillac Escalades.
The signature armor of the Bertinelli syndicate.
“They’re on us,” Frank growled, flooring the gas pedal as the speedometer climbed past seventy miles per hour.
“They don’t want to arrest us, Callum,” Hazel said, turning in her seat to look at the pursuing vehicles.
“They want Arthur’s journals, and they want no survivors.”
Callum reached into his inner pocket with his left hand and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook with gold-leaf edges—the journal Hazel had believed Julian stole.
Hazel’s eyes widened.
“You had it?”
“Julian took the decoy ledger from the safe in your apartment,” Callum murmured, his voice fading with blood loss.
“I moved the original journal to my coat this morning before I came to your desk.”
“Why?”
Callum looked out the window at the distant, glittering towers of downtown Chicago.
“Because page eighty-four contains the offshore routing numbers for Carmine Bertinelli’s private money in Zurich.”
“Every dollar the Bertinelli family stole from the city over forty years is tied to that account.”
“And the account requires two signatures to release the assets to the federal authorities.”
“Whose signatures, Callum?”
May you like
Callum closed his eyes against the rising darkness in his mind.
“Arthur Sullivan... and Daniel Reed.”
