Chapter 14 - The Mentor’s Shadow
The two contractors backed slowly out of the control room, their hands interlocked behind their tactical helmets, disappearing into the mist of the gravel yard under Victor’s shotgun.
That left Aaron Blake standing alone in the center of the control room, the red warning lights of the microwave transmitter casting bloody shadows across his face.
His carbine dangled from its tactical sling against his chest, his hands trembling with rage and adrenaline.
"You should have stayed in the kitchen, Megan," Blake whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of hatred and grief.
"You were safe there."
"You had a clean life."
"I gave you that assignment so you would be out of the precinct when the indictments came down."
"You gave me that assignment to make me a target, Aaron!" Megan yelled, her voice echoing off the concrete walls.
"You wanted an undercover cop in that house so that when Sentinel wiped out the Marinos, the state would have an excuse to take everything!"
Blake shook his head, a grotesque laugh escaping his bloody lips.
"You don't know the half of it, kid."
"You think this started with Julian Marino?"
"This started twelve years ago on Route 4."
Megan’s finger tightened on the trigger of her Glock, the world narrowing down to the space between Blake’s eyes.
"What did you say?"
Blake took a slow step forward, tapping his badge with his index finger.
"Your father, Megan."
"Senior Patrolman Thomas Carter."
"He was a saint, wasn't he?"
"A real hero who never took a bribe and never looked away."
"Do you know why his car hit that bridge, Megan?"
"Do you know why the steering column broke on a straight piece of dry road?"
Megan’s breath caught in her throat, a cold, suffocating weight pressing down on her chest.
"You..." she breathed, the words barely audible above the hum of the transmitters.
"He found the first transport contracts, Megan," Blake said, his eyes wild and unblinking.
"Sentinel was just starting then."
"The Commissioner offered him half a million dollars to lose a single inspection log."
"Your father threw the check in the Commissioner’s face and walked out of the building."
"He was going to the State Prosecutor the next morning."
"The Commissioner called me, Megan."
"He told me that if Carter talk, twenty officers in our division would spend the rest of their lives in federal penitentiaries."
"I had a family to protect."
"I had a pension to secure."
"So I went to your father’s garage while he was having dinner with you."
"I cut the hydraulic return line on his patrol cruiser."
"I did it with the same wrench your father gave me when I joined the department."
The air in the room seemed to freeze into solid ice.
Nico moved forward, his jaw tight, his carbine ready to fire, but Megan held up her left hand, stopping him.
Tears of raw, burning fury tracked through the grime and soot on Megan’s cheeks, but her weapon never wavered by a millimeter.
"You sat at my kitchen table," Megan whispered, her voice deadly, quiet, and terrifying.
"You ate my mother’s food while my father was being buried in the ground."
"I looked after you!" Blake screamed, losing all control.
"I made sure you got into the academy!"
"I made sure you had the best assignments!"
"I owed him that much!"
"You owed him your life, Aaron," Megan said.
Blake’s hand dropped with lightning speed toward the backup revolver holstered on his tactical vest.
He was fast—a veteran shooter who had killed men in dark rooms for thirty years.
Megan was faster.
She didn't aim for his head.
She fired three rounds into Blake’s right shoulder and collarbone, shattering the bone and sending his revolver spinning across the floor.
Blake slammed against the main transmission console with a violent shriek of agony, his left hand clutching his shattered shoulder.
Megan closed the distance between them in two strides.
She drove her tactical boot into his uninjured knee, forcing the corrupt detective down onto his face against the cold concrete floor.
She pressed the hot barrel of her Glock against the nape of his neck, her breathing coming in harsh, measured gasps.
"Megan, don't do it," Nico said softly from the doorway.
"Look at the monitors."
Megan kept her gun pressed to Blake’s neck, her eyes flicking up to the bank of closed-circuit monitors mounted above the console.
The winding mountain road leading up to Beacon Hill was filled with a convoy of thirty vehicles.
They weren't Sentinel SUVs, and they weren't municipal patrol cruisers.
They were dark-blue and black tactical suburbans bearing the gold seals of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Marshals Service.
Above the mountain, the deep, rhythmic thrumming of two Sikorsky tactical helicopters rattled the reinforced concrete bunker.
The emergency broadcast had done its work.
The Department of Justice had mobilized their federal response teams from three states, bypassing local municipal dispatch completely.
Blake looked up through the blood running into his eyes, his breathing shallow and wet.
"Shoot me, Megan," Blake wheezed, his teeth stained red.
"End it."
"If you let them take me, I’ll tell them everything."
"I’ll tell them you were in on it."
"I’ll drag your name through the mud until your father’s memory is completely erased."
Megan looked down at the man who had destroyed her family and poisoned her city.
She slowly pulled the hammer of her Glock back into the decocked position and slipped the weapon into her holster.
"No, Aaron," Megan said, her voice completely calm, completely detached, completely pure.
"My father’s memory doesn't belong to you."
"And death is too easy a way out for a man who sold his badge for a pension."
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"You are going to sit in a federal courtroom in orange jumpsuits for the next forty years."
"And every morning, when you wake up in an eight-by-ten cell, you are going to remember that the maid you trained was the one who put you there."
