Chapter 8 - The Wolf at the Door
The world dissolved into fire, smoke, and thunder.
The moment Marcus screamed the order, I didn't reach for a weapon. I dove sideways, sweeping Lily beneath my body and rolling Clara’s limp form behind the heavy steel frame of the elevator shaft’s counterweight pillar.
*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
A deafening burst of fully automatic fire tore through the elevator cage. Sparks rained down like burning hail as 9mm rounds shredded the corrugated metal, pulverizing the control panel into flying shards of plastic and copper wire.
“CONTAIN THE EXITS!” Kane bellowed over the roar of gunfire. “THEY’VE CALLED FEDERAL ESCORT!”
The loading bay’s massive overhead metal roll-up doors suddenly rattled with terrifying violence.
*BOOM!*
The concrete floor shook beneath our knees.
It wasn't a knock. It was a tactical breaching charge.
*BOOM!*
The six-inch reinforced steel hinges of the loading dock doors sheared off in an explosion of blue smoke and concrete shrapnel. A pair of matte-black BearCat armored vehicles blasted through the debris, their reinforced steel grilles crushing the hood of Marcus Sterling’s lead SUV like an empty soda can.
“FEDERAL AGENTS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS NOW!”
Megaphones tore through the smoke. Blinding, high-intensity halogen searchlights swept across the garage, pinning Marcus, Julianna, and their private mercenaries in an inescapable crossfire of white light.
The mercenaries panicked. One of them turned his rifle toward the BearCat and fired a three-round burst.
The response from the federal tactical unit was instantaneous and catastrophic.
A hail of precision return fire punched through the mercenary’s chest, throwing him five feet back against the concrete wall. The remaining three private guards immediately threw their weapons to the floor, dropping flat onto their stomachs with their hands locked behind their heads.
“CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!” Kane shrieked, dropping his silver revolver onto the pavement, his hands raised high in the air, his face gray with the sudden realization that forty years of impunity had just evaporated in three seconds.
“Julianna! Move the car! MOVE THE CAR!” Marcus roared, his trembling hands frantically clawing at the controls of his motorized wheelchair, trying to spin away from the blinding searchlights.
Julianna didn't move.
She stood frozen in the center of the loading bay, her white wedding dress covered in soot, oil, and glass dust. She looked at the federal agents pouring out of the armored vehicles with tactical shields and assault rifles. She looked at her father screaming in his wheelchair.
And then she looked at me.
“Mark,” she breathed.
I stepped out from behind the steel pillar, carrying Lily in my left arm, holding Clara’s bleeding head against my shoulder with my right.
“It’s over, Julianna,” I said.
Julianna’s eyes filled with wild, desperate tears. She reached into her bouquet, which lay crushed on the hood of the remaining SUV. Her hand emerged clutching a small, snub-nosed chrome pistol.
“I won't go to prison, Mark!” she screamed, her voice cracking into madness. “I was born a Sterling! I will not spend thirty years in a federal cell because of your pathetic sister!”
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She leveled the barrel straight at Clara’s face.
***
