Chapter 3 - THE HIGHWAY CHASE
Gunfire ripped through the dark.
Muzzle flashes strobed across the ballroom in blinding, jagged bursts.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Screams tore through the darkness as billionaires and brokers scrambled over overturned velvet chairs.
I didn't have time to flinch.
A heavy arm wrapped around my waist with the force of an iron band.
Nolan hauled me off the platform.
He threw his body over mine, driving us both behind a reinforced marble serving station.
Bullets chipped the marble above our heads, showering my hair with stone dust and plaster.
The smell of hot cordite and ozone flooded my lungs.
"Stay down," Nolan commanded.
His voice didn't shake.
Not even a tremor.
He drew a matte-black automatic from beneath his dinner jacket.
He didn't fire blindly.
He tracked the orange muzzle flashes near the main double doors.
Two precise shots.
Thump. Thump.
A heavy body collapsed into the dessert table twenty feet away, taking a cascade of champagne flutes down with it.
"Marcus!" Nolan spoke into his lapel microphone.
"Service corridor is clear, Boss," a deep voice crackled back through his earpiece.
"SUV is idling at the loading dock."
Nolan pulled me to my feet in one fluid motion.
He didn't ask if I was ready.
He grabbed my wrist—firm, bruising, impossible to break.
He dragged me through the shattered kitchen doors into the service hallway.
Fluorescent emergency strips flickered red along the linoleum.
My flat server shoes squeaked on the wet tile.
"Where is Kara?" I panted, my lungs burning.
"Where is my friend?!"
Nolan didn't slow down.
"Your friend took fifty thousand dollars in cash from Sterling's driver twenty minutes ago."
"She's already on the Saw Mill Parkway."
The betrayal hit my chest like a physical blow.
Fifty thousand dollars.
That was the price of our ten-year friendship.
We kicked open the heavy iron crash bar of the rear delivery door.
The freezing October rain hit my face like needles.
An armored matte-black Cadillac Escalade idled on the concrete loading apron, exhaust billowing white into the dark.
A mountain of a man with a shaved head and a tactical vest held the rear door wide.
Marcus.
"Get in!" Marcus barked.
Nolan shoved me onto the leather seat and slid in directly behind me.
The heavy door slammed shut with a pressurized thud that cut off the distant sirens.
Marcus floored the gas.
All four tires screamed against the wet pavement.
The Escalade leaped forward, smashing through a wooden security gate and launching onto the winding two-lane road toward the parkway.
I pressed my back against the leather seat, gasping for air.
My hands were shaking so hard I couldn't clasp them together.
Beside me, Nolan calmly ejected his magazine, checked the brass rounds, and slapped it back into the grip with a sharp clack.
"You're shaking," he said, not looking at me.
"Someone just shot at me, Nolan!"
"They weren't shooting at you."
He turned his head.
His icy blue eyes locked onto mine in the green glow of the dashboard lights.
"Sterling saw you recognize the photograph."
"He knows Arthur gave you the decryption key before he died."
"I don't have a key!" I cried out.
"My father left me four thousand dollars in a savings account and a box of old law textbooks!"
Nolan leaned across the console.
His large hand reached out, stopping inches from my throat.
"Then why have you worn that silver locket since the day he was buried?"
My hand flew to my chest before I could stop it.
Beneath my borrowed waitress blouse rested a simple, tarnished silver oval on a thin chain.
My father had given it to me on my sixteenth birthday.
“Never take it off, Livvy,” he had whispered from his hospital bed after his first stroke.
“Everything you need to survive is right here.”
Before I could answer, a violent crash shook the rear of the Escalade.
Metal screamed against metal.
Through the rain-streaked rear glass, two massive black Dodge Rams were tailgating us at ninety miles per hour.
Their high beams cut through our cabin like twin searchlights.
May you like
The passenger window of the lead truck rolled down.
A man leaned out into the freezing gale, raising a military-grade rocket launcher to his shoulder.
