Chapter 3 - THE DROP SHAFT
The world lost gravity.
My stomach surged into my throat.
The rush of air screamed through the elevator vents like a dying siren.
Forty floors above the basement concrete.
Falling.
Matteo did not scream.
He moved with the brutal efficiency of a man who had stared into open graves for a decade.
He threw his entire body weight over mine.
He shoved me down onto the reinforced rubber floor mats in the corner.
His arms locked around my shoulders, tucking my head beneath his broad chest.
“Tuck your knees!” he roared against my ear.
“Brace your back!”
He reached up with his left arm, hooking his fingers into the heavy brass emergency handrail bolted along the mirror.
The digital floor indicator was a blur of red light.
Twenty-eight.
Twenty-two.
Sixteen.
The emergency pneumatic air brakes on the car frame finally engaged.
SCREEEEEECH.
The sound of friction was deafening.
Sparks showered through the floor seams in blinding white arcs.
The smell of burning brake shoes and pulverized iron filled the cab.
The car shuddered violently, slamming our hips against the wall.
The velocity slowed.
Twelve.
Eight.
Four.
The car crashed into the secondary buffer springs on Sub-level Three.
WHAM.
The impact threw my jaw into Matteo’s collarbone.
The ceiling panels tore loose, raining sheet metal and wiring across our backs.
Mirrors shattered into thousands of silver diamonds.
Then, absolute silence.
Only the hiss of severed hydraulic fluid spraying against hot steel.
Matteo rolled off me slowly.
He was bleeding from a cut across his left temple.
He spat dark blood onto the ruined linoleum.
“Clara,” he coughed, his hands immediately searching my collar, my shoulders, my ribs.
“Are you broken?”
“I’m alive,” I wheezed.
My lungs burned with chemical smoke.
My right wrist throbbed with blinding, nauseating agony, but the tape had held the bone in place.
Matteo kicked the ceiling debris away.
He drew a matte-black Glock from his ankle holster.
He racked the slide with one hand against his knee.
CLACK.
“Sub-level Three,” he muttered, checking his watch.
“The underground parking garage.”
“Dominic has a clean-up team waiting at the elevator doors.”
I pushed myself up, leaning against his shoulder.
“He planned this.”
“He has planned this since Monday,” Matteo said.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a four-inch folding knife.
He sliced the heavy rubber floor mat into a long, rigid splint.
Without asking, he wrapped it around my injured forearm, securing it with his silk necktie.
The support brought instant, freezing relief to my throbbing nerve endings.
“Can you hold a weapon?” he asked.
“My left hand works,” I said.
“Good.”
He reached into the waistband of his trousers and pulled a snub-nosed .38 revolver.
He placed it into my left palm.
The steel was heavy, cold, reassuring.
“Point at the chest,” he whispered.
“Do not hesitate.”
Outside the elevator doors, heavy boots crunched across broken glass.
Two men.
Moving with tactical discipline.
A voice spoke through the three-inch gap where the elevator doors had jammed.
“Check the wreckage.”
“Dominic wants both bodies confirmed before he signs the harbor transfer.”
Matteo signaled me with three fingers.
Three.
Two.
One.
Matteo drove his combat boot into the center seam of the jammed doors.
The reinforced steel doors burst outward with a screech of bent brass.
Matteo stepped out into the dark garage, firing three rapid rounds before his boots even hit the concrete.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The first shooter dropped like an empty sack into a pool of motor oil.
The second shooter scrambled behind a concrete pillar, his submachine gun barking in blind panic.
Bullets ricocheted off the elevator frame, spraying orange sparks across my face.
Matteo moved like smoke.
He circled the pillar from the blind angle.
A dull thud echoed through the garage.
A sickening snap of bone.
Then silence.
Matteo reappeared from behind the pillar, reloading his magazine.
“Clear,” he called softly.
I stepped out of the elevator wreckage.
The underground garage was vast, lit only by dim yellow emergency sconces.
Dozens of black executive sedans sat parked in neat rows.
At the far end of the ramp, daylight spilled down from the street entrance.
And blocking that ramp sat an armored black Suburban.
Its high beams clicked on, blinding us in two pillars of brilliant white light.
May you like
The engine roared to life.
Tires screamed against the smooth concrete as the three-ton truck accelerated straight toward us.
