Chapter 26 - Blood Ties and Poison Pens
Plaster dust and cordite choked the nursery air.
Vanessa drew her Glock, firing three blind rounds through the splintered doorframe into the darkened living room. Outside, tactical tires screeched as Miller’s perimeter team engaged hostile shooters in the courtyard below.
"Victoria’s cleaners!" Vanessa hissed, slamming a fresh magazine into her weapon. "She knew Daniel kept a backup! She sent a team to sanitize the apartment!"
Sophia clutched the encrypted drive against her chest. Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs, and with every heavy beat, the burning ache flared back to life beneath her collarbone. The Phase One blocker was beginning to weaken under the adrenaline surge.
"Vanessa, the fire escape behind the master closet," Sophia gasped, coughing through the drywall dust. "There’s a private service lift Daniel used to sneak his mistresses up from the basement garage."
"Move!" Vanessa shouted.
Covered by Vanessa’s suppressive fire, Sophia scrambled into the master closet, hit the manual override on the hidden service panel, and wrenched the heavy steel door open. They tumbled into the narrow maintenance elevator just as two heavily armed men in sterile black tactical gear burst into the bedroom.
Vanessa fired twice through the closing steel cage. One shooter collapsed; the second scrambled for cover as the elevator plummeted downward.
Inside the rattling elevator cage, Sophia collapsed against the steel wall, clutching her left side. Her lips were turning faint lavender.
"Hayes! We’re coming down to the garage!" Vanessa screamed into her tactical radio. "Get the crash cart ready!"
Sophia opened the leather-bound journal with trembling fingers. It was written in Daniel’s frantic, manic scrawl during the final weeks before his arrest.
*She isn't a broker. She isn't an ally. The woman calling herself 'Nemean' knows things about the Vance trust that only a Sterling could know. She gave me the compound, but she demanded the access codes to the North Sea manifest. She wants the liquid gas tankers. If she gets them, she won't just ruin Arthur—she’ll detonate the offshore terminals.*
Sophia turned the page. Pasted inside was a printout of an offshore biomedical manifest: *Antidote Phase Two: Lyophilized Enzyme-K. Storage location: Pier 42, Cold Storage Facility, Bayonne.*
"The second marker isn't with Arthur," Sophia panted, blood trickling from her nose as her capillaries began to leak under the toxin's chemical pressure. "Victoria lied to Miller. She didn't want Arthur out for the bearer shares. She wanted Arthur out to draw the FBI away from Bayonne!"
Vanessa caught Sophia’s slumping shoulders. "Hold on, Sophia! Don’t you dare close your eyes! Hayes is right at the garage doors!"
The elevator doors banged open. Dr. Hayes and two federal agents dragged Sophia onto a gurney. Hayes immediately drove an oxygen mask over her face and slammed an intravenous drip of atropine into her port.
"Her pulse is one-forty and irregular!" Hayes yelled over the blare of sirens. "Ventricular tachycardia! We need to stabilize her right now or she goes into cardiac arrest!"
Sophia grabbed Miller’s sleeve with surprising, desperate strength, pulling the agent down until his ear was an inch from her lips.
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"Bayonne..." Sophia coughed, flecks of crimson spotting the inside of the clear plastic mask. "Pier forty-two. Don't go to the courthouse. It’s... it’s an ambush."
***
