Chapter 7 - The Wolves Gather At Midnight
In the penthouse boardroom of Blackridge Tower, the air reeked of expensive bourbon and sour panic.
Nolan Pike sat on a low leather sofa, his right hand wrapped tightly in thick white surgical gauze.
Dried blood stained the edge of his combat sleeve.
Across the table sat District Attorney Leonard Cross, a sweating, balding man in a rumpled silk tie.
Beside him stood Chief of Police Marcus Vance, nervously pacing back and forth along the glass wall.
Richard Blackridge stood at the bar, pouring himself four fingers of amber liquor with an unsteady hand.
“You told me Mercer was trapped like a rabbit!” Blackridge roared, slamming the heavy crystal decanter onto the wood.
“I had him cornered!” Pike barked back through gritted teeth.
“Then Moretti’s private army ambushed us in the middle of a damn swamp!”
“Moretti has shooters who move like active-duty Delta operators!”
“They shot two of my men and took Mercer before we could even secure the perimeter!”
DA Cross wiped his greasy forehead with a white handkerchief.
“Richard, if Cole Mercer reached Gabriel Moretti, we are dead in the water.”
“Moretti doesn’t play by political rules.”
“He has offshore holding companies that outspend the state government.”
“And he hates your guts after what happened to his brother seven years ago.”
“Shut up, Leonard!” Blackridge snarled, pacing toward the window.
“Does Moretti have the drive?”
“We don’t know,” Pike admitted, his jaw tight with pain.
“The drive wasn’t in Emma Whitaker’s purse.”
“Mercer must have had it on him in the swamp, or he stashed it somewhere in the county.”
Chief Marcus Vance stopped pacing and leaned over the table.
“Richard, listen to me carefully,” the police chief urged in a hushed, urgent tone.
“The state troopers are already asking questions about the gas station on County Road 14.”
“The clerk finally came out of the walk-in freezer at sunrise.”
“He saw your marked security trucks.”
“He saw Nolan Pike draw a weapon.”
“And he saw a woman get shot in cold blood.”
“Then handle the clerk!” Blackridge ordered, his eyes wild with fury.
“Offer him fifty thousand dollars to forget what he saw, or put him in the river with the others!”
“It’s too late for that!” Cross shouted, losing his composure.
“The federal task force has been sniffing around our environmental filings since last month!”
“If Moretti feeds them the Sector 7 shipping logs, the FBI will drop an indictment on all of us before the weekend!”
“We will be doing thirty years in federal penitentiary, Richard!”
Blackridge took a long, burning swallow of his bourbon, his knuckles white around the glass.
He looked at Pike, his expression shifting from blind rage to cold, calculating malice.
“Where would Moretti take them?” Blackridge asked quietly.
Pike narrowed his eyes.
“Moretti owns a dozen commercial warehouses along the Cape Fear River docks.”
“He has a private medical facility behind the old textile warehouse on Fifth Street.”
“He used it to patch up his dockworkers during the harbor union strikes.”
“If the girl was hit bad, that’s the only place in Bellhaven equipped to treat a gunshot wound off the record.”
Blackridge set his glass down.
“Leonard, I want a municipal emergency order signed right now,” Blackridge commanded the District Attorney.
“An order authorizing an armed search of Moretti’s Fifth Street warehouse under the guise of an imminent chemical hazard.”
Cross stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Are you completely insane, Richard?”
“You want the Bellhaven Police Department to raid Gabriel Moretti’s private stronghold?”
“Not the police department,” Blackridge smiled, a grotesque, predatory grin.
“Chief Vance will authorize an emergency deputization of forty private Blackridge Security contractors.”
“Give them city badges and tactical swat gear.”
“Pike will lead the assault.”
Pike looked down at his bandaged hand, a vicious sneer spreading across his scarred face.
“We go in heavy,” Pike said, his eyes gleaming with bloodlust.
“No questions asked.”
“Breach the doors, neutralize any resistance, and burn the facility to the ground.”
“What about the girl and Mercer?” Chief Vance asked, his voice shaking.
“Leave nobody breathing,” Blackridge said without a second of hesitation.
“When the building burns, it will be labeled an industrial fire caused by illegal chemical storage.”
“We plant five kilograms of unlicensed explosives in Moretti’s basement.”
“By the time the state fire marshal sifts through the ashes, Moretti will look like a domestic terrorist who got caught in his own blast.”
“And the red flash drive will be melted into scrap plastic.”
Cross looked at the two men, realizing that there was no turning back from this ledge.
He pulled his gold fountain pen from his breast pocket and reached for the municipal parchment.
“God forgive us,” Cross muttered under his breath.
May you like
“God has nothing to do with Bellhaven, Leonard,” Blackridge whispered, staring out into the gray morning mist.
“Power belongs to the men who are willing to pull the trigger until the room goes silent.”
