Chapter 2 - A Calculated Velocity
The black armored Yukon was idling beside the fuel pumps when Andrew reached the open yard.
He did not wait for the driver to lean over and unlock the passenger door.
Andrew ripped the driver-side door open by the handle, seized the hired wheelman by his collar, and threw him onto the wet asphalt like a bag of wet laundry.
"Out," Andrew said.
Lucas threw himself into the passenger seat just as Andrew slammed the door shut and mashed his foot into the floorboard.
The six-liter engine roared with an enraged mechanical scream.
All four tires fought for grip against the pooling diesel and rain before biting into the asphalt.
The heavy SUV leaped forward, blasting through the gate barrier and snapping the wooden arm in two.
Rain hit the windshield with the force of thrown gravel.
The wipers fought uselessly against the sheet of gray water cascading from the overpass above.
Andrew took the entrance ramp to the FDR Drive at seventy-five miles an hour without tapping the brakes.
The vehicle leaned violently toward the safety barrier, its steel rims skimming six inches from the concrete divider.
"You're going to hydroplane us into the river," Lucas said, his voice entirely devoid of panic as he checked the slide of his nine-millimeter weapon.
"Load the heavy magazines," Andrew replied through teeth clenched so tightly they threatened to crack.
Cindy’s voice kept playing on a continuous, maddening loop inside his skull.
Please don't.
She had never spoken to him with anything less than quiet, unshakeable composure.
She had faced down federal prosecutors with subpoena warrants in his boardroom without batting an eye.
She had stood beside him during the funeral of his father while rival capos stood across the cemetery with hands buried inside their trench coats.
She was gentle, fragile, and utterly untouched by the rot of the criminal world.
He had deliberately kept it that way.
He paid her four times the market rate of an executive assistant so she could send money home to her younger sister Maya.
He knew Maya was nineteen and studying biology at Ohio State on a scholarship that didn't cover room and board.
He knew Cindy bought second-hand clothes so her sister could afford expensive textbooks.
He knew everything about her because keeping her safe had become the only silent, clean indulgence in his blood-soaked life.
Three weeks ago, he had noticed the faint yellow shadow of a bruise along her left wrist.
When he had questioned her, she had flushed crimson and blamed the heavy brass handles of the filing archive.
He had known she was lying.
He had known about David Vance, the grease-stained mechanic from Queens who smelled of cheap bourbon and resentment.
He had assumed Cindy had walked away from the wreckage of that failed domestic disaster.
Andrew gripped the steering wheel so hard the stitched leather tore beneath his fingers.
He had assumed.
Assumption was the hallmark of an amateur, and now Cindy was bleeding because he had failed to execute an insect before it could sting.
"Three miles out," Lucas reported, tapping the tactical map mounted on the dash.
"Local traffic is light because of the weather, but the Midtown tunnel exit is bottlenecked with box trucks."
Andrew didn't lift his foot.
He clicked on the covert emergency strobe lights hidden behind the front radiator grille.
Twin pulses of blinding blue and red cut through the rain.
A yellow cab swerved desperately into the center lane as Andrew tore past its bumper at eighty-eight miles per hour.
"If this is an isolated domestic matter, we cannot drop bodies in a residential corridor," Lucas said quietly.
"The district attorney is already looking for an excuse to open Carter Logistics' corporate books."
"If he broke her skin, he doesn't leave the room alive," Andrew replied.
It was not a threat delivered in anger.
It was a statement of natural law.
"Understood," Lucas muttered, clicking a hollow-point cartridge into the firing chamber of his pistol.
"Aim low. Residential drywall doesn't stop nine-millimeter rounds."
Andrew pulled the wheel hard to the right, ignoring the red light at the Forty-First Street intersection.
The SUV skipped over the gutter, crushing a line of plastic trash cans and roaring into the narrow service alley behind Cindy's pre-war apartment block.
He cut the headlights before the vehicle even came to a complete halt.
The tires slid across wet cobblestones, stopping mere inches from an industrial dumpster.
Andrew was out of the car before the engine could cycle down.
The rain struck his linen shirt, pasting the expensive fabric against his shoulders like cold ice.
Above them, the black fire escape clung to the red brick facade of the building like an iron skeleton.
"Third floor," Lucas murmured, stepping into the shadows of the alley.
"Window faces the courtyard. Lights are on."
Andrew caught the bottom rung of the iron counterbalanced ladder and hauled himself upward.
He did not care about stealth.
He took the metal steps three at a time, his dress shoes slipping on the wet rust.
When he reached the third-floor platform, he pressed his back against the sodden brick.
Through the dirty glass panes of Cindy's kitchen window, the yellow light flickered erratically.
Inside, the silence was thicker than the storm.
There was no more shouting.
There were no more cries for mercy.
Only the dull, hollow sound of heavy breathing and the steady drip of broken plumbing.
Andrew looked at Lucas, whose weapon was already drawn and leveled at the window frame.
May you like
Andrew did not wait for tactical entry protocols.
He pulled the sleeve of his tailored suit over his right forearm, clenched his fist, and drove it directly through the glass.
