Chapter 4 - The Trap In The Archives And The Blood-Stained Blueprint
The soft metallic click of a weapon’s hammer coming to full cock echoed through the dusty third-floor archives with terrifying clarity.
I didn't hesitate.
I dropped flat onto the wooden floorboards, rolling hard to the right just as a deafening roar tore through the darkness.
Bang!
A bullet slammed into the brick wall behind me, sending a shower of red dust and sharp fragments raining down over my shoulders.
Muzzle flash illuminated the far corner of the labyrinth for a fraction of a second, casting a stark, blinding light over stacked wooden crates and rolls of old architectural blueprints.
I raised my Smith & Wesson and fired twice toward the flash.
Bang! Bang!
Wood splintered. A heavy metal pipe rang out like a struck bell.
“You missed, Dominic!” a voice hissed from the darkness.
The voice was distorted, raspy, disguised by a mechanical edge, but beneath the artificial distortion, there was something horribly, sickeningly familiar about the cadence.
It was a voice I had heard across conference tables, in hallways, or perhaps in my own office.
“Show your face!” I shouted, scrambling on my hands and knees behind a massive oak filing cabinet that offered solid ballistic cover.
“Show my face?” the voice mocked, footsteps pacing slowly, softly, circling around my position in the maze of crates. “After all this time, Dominic? You look at me every single week, and yet you’re too blind, too arrogant, to realize who holds the strings in your pathetic life.”
Every week.
My blood ran cold.
That narrowed the list down significantly.
Accountants. Legal counsel. Private bankers. Security consultants.
“Who are you?” I demanded, pressing my back flat against the cold metal of the filing cabinet, my finger resting lightly on the trigger. “Why Isabelle? What did she see?”
“She saw what she wasn't supposed to see,” the voice laughed softly, the sound dripping with casual cruelty. “Isabelle was clever. Too clever for her own good. She found out that your little criminal empire wasn't as independent as you thought. She found out who you were really answering to, Dominic. She threatened to take the girls and go to the feds. So... adjustments had to be made.”
A fiery explosion of rage ripped through my chest.
“You killed the mother of my children!” I roared, popping up from behind the cabinet and firing three rapid shots toward the sound of the voice.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A muffled curse echoed from the darkness, followed by the heavy sound of a body crashing against wooden crates.
I bolted forward, sprinting around the corner of the filing cabinet, closing in on the shooter's position.
I reached the corner, pivoted with my revolver raised, and swept the barrel across the floor.
Empty.
No one was there.
Just a pool of dark, fresh blood soaking into a roll of architectural blueprints on the floor.
I dropped to one knee, touching the warm crimson liquid with my fingertips.
He was hit. I had winged him.
He couldn't have gone far. The third floor had only two exits—the spiral staircase I had just run up, and a maintenance ladder leading out onto the roof.
I stood up, gripping my revolver with both hands, and moved cautiously toward the roof access door at the end of the corridor.
The heavy metal door was cracked open by an inch, letting a blast of freezing night wind whistle into the stagnant air of the archives.
I pushed the door open with the barrel of my gun and stepped out onto the flat, gravel-covered roof of the mansion.
The wind howled off the Long Island Sound, driving a cold, stinging rain sideways across the tar paper.
Empty.
The roof was completely deserted.
Except for a dark wool jacket discarded near the parapet wall, fluttering violently in the gale-force wind.
And trailing away from the jacket, a faint, sporadic line of dark blood droplets leading straight toward the edge of the roof—where a service ladder hung down toward the ground twenty feet below.
I rushed to the edge, leaning over the concrete parapet, looking down into the dark, rain-soaked gardens below.
A single black sedan was idling near the edge of the woods, its headlights off.
As I watched, the car’s tires spun in the mud, throwing gravel into the dark, and it shot down the private access road toward the main highway at breakneck speed.
He had escaped.
I lowered my revolver, resting my forehead against the cold concrete of the parapet, my breath coming in ragged, steaming gasps.
He had slipped through my fingers.
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But he was wounded. He was bleeding on my blueprints.
And most importantly... I had his jacket.
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