Chapter 4 - THE HUDSON BLUFF
"RPG!" Marcus roared from the front seat.
He yanked the heavy steering wheel hard to the left.
The three-ton Escalade slid sideways across three lanes of wet asphalt on the Sprain Brook Parkway.
WHOOSH.
A blinding streak of white-hot magnesium fire tore through the darkness.
The warhead missed our rear bumper by inches, detonating against an overhead highway sign.
BOOM!
The green overhead sign imploded into twisted, burning aluminum.
The shockwave slammed into the side of our vehicle, lifting the right-side tires completely off the pavement.
For a terrifying second, we were airborne on two wheels.
Nolan’s arm shot across my chest, pinning me hard against the leather seatback as the SUV crashed back down onto its suspension with a bone-jarring slam.
"Hold on," Nolan muttered against my ear.
He unrolled his window two inches against the freezing wind.
He didn't use his pistol.
He reached beneath his seat and pulled out a short-barreled tactical rifle.
He braced the barrel on the reinforced window frame.
He waited for the highway curve.
The road banked sharply right around a rocky granite bluff overlooking the Hudson River.
The lead Dodge Ram accelerated to ram our rear quarter-panel.
Nolan fired three controlled bursts.
Tat-tat-tat. Tat-tat-tat.
The heavy armor-piercing rounds punched directly through the Ram's front radiator and into the driver's block.
The truck's front suspension collapsed.
Sparks showered across the road in a brilliant rooster tail of orange fire.
The Ram flipped end-over-end at eighty miles per hour, rolling four times before smashing through the guardrail.
It plummeted two hundred feet down the rocky bluff into the black, swollen waters of the Hudson.
The second truck swerved violently to avoid the rolling wreckage.
It blew both passenger-side tires against the concrete median, spinning into a high-speed donut before stalling across the northbound lanes.
Silence returned to our cabin, broken only by the steady sweep of the wipers.
Marcus let out a slow, gravelly breath.
"Highway patrol will be all over this in four minutes, Boss."
"Take the Yonkers industrial exit," Nolan ordered.
He rolled his window up and set the rifle on the floorboards.
His breathing remained entirely level.
He looked at me.
I was pressed flat against the door, my knuckles white, staring at him as if he were a ghost made of iron and gunpowder.
"You killed them," I whispered.
"They came to put you in a shipping container, Olivia."
"Sterling doesn't leave witnesses."
"He hasn't left one in twenty years."
Nolan reached across the seat.
His fingers gently hooked around the thin silver chain at my collarbone.
He didn't pull.
He didn't break it.
He held the tarnished oval locket between his forefinger and thumb.
"Open it," he said.
My fingers were trembling so violently I could barely find the tiny notch on the side.
I had tried to open it when I was seventeen.
It had always seemed fused shut, soldered by age and dirt.
"Press the hinge and twist counter-clockwise," Nolan instructed quietly.
"Arthur had the same lock mechanism on his private safe at Pier 42."
I followed his words.
I pressed the small raised notch on the silver rim.
I twisted.
Click.
The back panel of the silver locket detached with a soft metallic scrape.
It didn't contain a faded photograph of my mother.
It contained a micro-SD card, no larger than a fingernail, embedded in black waterproof resin.
Across the plastic face of the card, etched in microscopic white print, was a single registration number:
VOSS-CARVER-42.
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.
"My father... and you?"
"Arthur was my partner, Olivia," Nolan said softly.
The coldness in his eyes finally cracked, revealing an abyss of suppressed grief.
"We built the terminal security together."
"We tried to dismantle Sterling's human trafficking network from the inside."
"And when Arthur realized he was being watched, he hid the master key on the only person Sterling's men wouldn't search."
"His sixteen-year-old daughter."
Nolan took the micro-SD card from my palm with infinite care.
"Sterling didn't hire your friend Kara to pay off a gambling debt, Olivia."
"Kara has been working for Sterling's private security firm since July."
"She was paid two hundred thousand dollars to deliver that locket tonight."
My heart felt as though it were tearing down the center.
Ten years.
Sleepovers.
Study sessions.
Kara holding my hand at the cemetery while they lowered my father's coffin into the wet dirt.
"She knew," I choked out, hot tears finally spilling down my cheeks.
"She knew what happened to my father."
"She helped them," Nolan said.
Marcus turned the Escalade off the parkway onto an unlit access road lined with rotting brick warehouses.
The rusted gantry cranes of the old Yonkers sugar refinery rose against the stormy sky like prehistoric beasts.
"Safe house is two miles ahead, Boss," Marcus announced.
Then the Escalade's dashboard monitors flickered twice and died.
The engine sputtered.
The power steering locked.
The heavy vehicle drifted across the muddy gravel shoulder, coming to a dead halt beneath the shadow of an abandoned rail bridge.
Marcus hit the ignition button.
Nothing.
A high-pitched, electronic whine began to hum from beneath our chassis.
Nolan’s head snapped toward the floorboards.
"EMP mine," Nolan hissed.
"Out! NOW!"
Before Marcus could reach the door handle, high-intensity halogen floodlights blazed to life from the top of the rail bridge above us.
A voice boomed through an industrial megaphone:
May you like
"MR. VOSS! STEP OUT WITH YOUR HANDS VISIBLE!"
"AND BRING ARTHUR CARVER'S DAUGHTER WITH YOU!"
