Chapter 8 - The Enforcer's Confession
The heat between them was hot enough to scorch the wet wool of Elias’s coat.
Hollis did not drop the road flare, nor did he raise a weapon toward the man he had raised from childhood.
Elias walked forward until barely ten feet of smoking gravel separated them.
His pistol remained leveled directly at the center of Hollis’s chest.
“Put the flare down, Hollis,” Elias said, his voice cutting through the roar of the fire like a cold knife.
Hollis looked down at his own hand as if he had forgotten what he was holding.
He tossed the red cylinder into a puddle of brackish water at his boots, where it hissed and died.
“You shouldn't have come down here, Elias,” Hollis rasped, his voice shredded by smoke.
“This was supposed to end quietly.”
“A tragic industrial accident caused by faulty wiring.”
“The papers would have burned, and you would have married Sloan Prescott next spring without ever knowing the rot beneath your feet.”
Elias took two heavy steps forward, the muzzle of his gun never wavering.
“You stood at my sister’s open grave, Hollis.”
“You held my shoulder while they lowered an empty coffin into the ground.”
“I watched you cry real tears while the priest said the final blessings.”
A look of profound agony tore across Hollis’s weathered face.
He dropped the crowbar, letting the heavy metal clatter uselessly onto the concrete floor of the loading bay.
“Those tears were real, Elias!”
“God help me, every single tear I wept was real!”
Willa stepped up beside Elias, keeping the small revolver held at waist height.
“You met Dr. Vance at the east gate two nights ago, Mr. Ward,” Willa challenged, her voice piercing the smoke.
“You gave him an envelope to keep him silent.”
“You knew Cecilia was alive.”
Hollis turned his hollow eyes toward Willa, shaking his head slowly.
“You think I helped them because I wanted their filthy money?”
“Look at me, girl!”
“I have lived in the same four-room apartment over the repair shop for thirty years!”
“I don't own yachts, I don't wear gold, and I don't give a damn about Prescott’s political career!”
Elias’s finger tightened against the trigger curve.
“Then why did you do it, Hollis?”
“Why did you help them cage my sister like an animal for seven years?!”
Hollis took a step toward Elias, ignoring the gun pointed at his heart.
“Because it was the only way to keep her breathing, you fool!”
The confession slammed into the smoky air with the force of an artillery shell.
Elias froze, his jaw locking.
“Explain yourself,” Elias hissed.
Hollis wiped a sleeve across his soot-stained forehead, his chest heaving with ragged breaths.
“Seven years ago, Cecilia discovered that Senator Prescott was using your father’s old deep-sea barges to smuggle illegal military arms to European syndicates.”
“She confronted Prescott in his private office with an entire briefcase of financial audits.”
“Prescott didn't negotiate with her.”
“He paid his private security contractors to run her car off the bridge into the deep water of the cove.”
Hollis swallowed hard, his voice breaking into a dry, painful cough.
“I was the one who pulled her out of the water that night, Elias.”
“Not the harbor police.”
“Not the Prescott clean-up crew.”
“I dragged her onto the rocks while she was coughing up salt and dying of exposure.”
“Before I could get her to a private clinic, Prescott’s men surrounded my vehicle.”
“Senator Prescott gave me a very simple choice.”
“I could let him put a bullet in the back of Cecilia’s skull right there on the shoreline and dump her body out at sea.”
“Or I could help them stage her official drowning, place a nameless corpse in the Baron family crypt, and keep Cecilia alive in secret.”
Elias’s hands began to tremble with a rare, terrifying tremor of rage.
“Why would Prescott keep her alive if she knew everything?”
“Because the Baron maritime charter had an unbreakable legal firewall!” Hollis yelled back over the sound of a collapsing roof timber inside the warehouse.
“Your grandfather wrote the Baltimore operating contract sixty years ago!”
“No foreign cargo container could clear the deep-water harbor without the explicit, biometric or verified ink signature of an authorized Baron blood relative!”
“You had already refused to do business with Prescott in 2018.”
“If Cecilia was dead, the legal authority lapsed within twelve months, and Prescott’s entire billion-dollar smuggling corridor would be permanently shut down by federal port inspectors!”
“So they needed her pulse!”
“They needed her hand to sign those manifests twice a year!”
“They told me that as long as I kept my mouth shut and brought the clearance binders to her bedside, they would let her live!”
Willa stepped forward, her mind racing through the dates and documents.
“What happened in November of 2019, Mr. Ward?”
“Why did the signatures stop?”
Hollis looked at Willa with absolute despair.
“Cecilia woke up from her medical coma completely.”
“She realized what the documents were.”
“She threw the fountain pen into Sloan Prescott’s face and swore she would rather die than sign another arms manifest.”
“When she refused to sign the December clearance, Sloan told her father that Cecilia had outlived her usefulness.”
“They decided to eliminate her.”
Elias took a ferocious stride forward and grabbed Hollis by the throat with his left hand, shoving the older man violently against the steel frame of the door.
“Where is she, Hollis?!” Elias roared, his voice cracking with volcanic fury.
“Where did they take my sister?!”
Hollis did not fight back.
He gasped for air under Elias’s iron grip, tears cutting clean tracks through the black soot on his cheeks.
“I moved her, Elias...”
“Three days ago, when Willa started asking about the 2019 Norfolk file, I knew Sloan was preparing to execute everyone.”
“I didn't trust Prescott’s doctors anymore.”
“I stole Cecilia out of the mainland facility on Tuesday night.”
“That’s why I met Vance at the gate—I forced Vance to give me the medical supplies and the life-support drugs she needs to survive!”
“Where is she right now?!”
“Bloodsworth Island,” Hollis wheezed, his face turning dark.
“The abandoned naval psychiatric station on the southern shoals.”
“She’s in the basement infirmary.”
“I left two of my old loyalists guarding the generator room.”
Suddenly, the sharp report of a high-caliber sniper rifle shattered the conversation.
A bullet tore through the corrugated metal siding behind Hollis, striking him clean through the left side of his ribcage.
Hollis gasped, his knees buckling instantly beneath him.
Elias caught the old enforcer before he hit the ground, dragging him behind the concrete pillar of the loading dock.
May you like
Across the burning yard, three black armored utility trucks had just breached the perimeter fence, their headlights slicing through the black smoke.
Sloan Prescott’s private mercenary squad had arrived to finish the job.
