Chapter 5 - Blood on Franklin Street"Closet. Now," I hissed.
Elena emerged carrying twelve-year-old Maya, the girl half-asleep in her pajamas, clutching a worn stuffed bear. Natalie intercepted them, gently taking Maya's arm and guiding them both into the reinforced linen closet behind the kitchen pantry.
"Stay down, cover your ears, and don't make a sound no matter what you hear," Natalie told the girl, her tone astonishingly gentle, stripping away all coldness. She closed the reinforced door and pulled a heavy credenza in front of it.
I took position to the left of the apartment entrance, back pressed against the drywall, Glock raised. Natalie flanked the right side, using an overturned solid-oak dining table as cover.
The outside hall went dead quiet. Then came the faint click of a key turning in the lock. Donovan had master keys to everything I owned.
The door swung inward.
The first man stepped through with a suppressed pistol drawn, scanning low. I struck him across the temple with the heavy slide of my Kimber, driving his head into the doorframe before he could scream. He collapsed like a sack of cement.
The second man reacted instantly, bringing a short-barrel shotgun up to bear.
Thwack. Thwack.
Two suppressed rounds punched through his chest. He staggered backward into the hallway, collapsing against the wallpaper. I didn't fire them.
I looked across the room. Natalie was holding her Glock with a two-handed combat grip, smoke rising faintly from the barrel, her eyes stone-cold and unwavering.
"First rule of tactical shooting," she whispered, lowering the gun to low-ready. "Center mass."
A third enforcer remaining in the hallway realized the ambush had failed and bolted back down the stairs, shouting into a radio: "Team Two! Primary target is inside 3B! Breach the front!"
"We have to move," I said. "Fire escape to the alley. Now!"
I pulled Elena and Maya from the pantry. Maya was crying silently, trembling against her mother's side. We scrambled through the rear window onto the wet iron fire escape just as heavy boots thundered up the interior staircase behind us, followed by the deafening roar of automatic gunfire tearing through the apartment's front door.
We hit the alley asphalt at a dead sprint. At the mouth of Franklin Street, tires shrieked.
The gray Ford Explorer lunged around the corner, headlights blazing, engine screaming as it accelerated straight toward us.
"Get back!" I shouted, shoving Elena and Maya behind a brick dumpster alcove.
Suddenly, a deafening mechanical crash echoed down the block.
From the opposite direction, our armored Suburban barreled out of the rain like a battering ram. Calvin slammed directly into the driver-side door of the Explorer at fifty miles an hour. The impact sounded like an artillery shell detonating, spinning the Explorer across the slick pavement until it wrapped violently around a cast-iron lamppost in a shower of sparks and shattered safety glass.
Calvin kicked open his crushed driver's door, blood streaming down his forehead, holding an MP5 submachine gun.
"Get in the back!" he roared over the hiss of ruptured radiators. "Moretti’s hitters are three blocks out on Canal!"
We piled into the Suburban's rear cabin. Calvin threw the battered transmission into reverse, tires spinning against the wet asphalt with a violent screech before biting into the pavement, rocketing us backward onto Greenwich.
In the back seat, Elena held Maya against her chest, rocking the terrified child. Natalie sat beside them, calmly ejecting her magazine, checking the remaining round count, and slapping it back home with the heel of her palm.
"Where do we go?" Elena wept, looking at me with wild eyes. "Roman, they know every house, every bank, every contact you have!"
"Not every contact," I said, catching Natalie’s eye in the rearview mirror.
"The vault under the Red Hook grain terminal," Natalie stated, finishing my thought. "It’s registered under an offshore holding corporation dissolved in 2018. It doesn't exist on any current company ledger."
"How do you know about Red Hook?" I demanded, my gaze locking onto hers with sudden, razor-sharp suspicion. "I haven't used that facility since before you were hired."
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Natalie met my stare without blinking, the streetlights outside casting deep shadows across her face.
"Because I didn't find out about Donovan Pierce today, Roman," she said, her voice dropping into a chilling monotone. "I've been hunting him for five years."
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