Chapter 3 - TICKING AT SEVENTY MILES PER HOUR
Seven seconds.
Adrien did not shout.
Panic was a death sentence in the Voss family.
"Bail!" Adrien roared.
He slammed his shoulder into the rear door release.
The lock jammed.
Six seconds.
The driver glanced into the rearview mirror, his face draining of color.
"Sir—"
Adrien drew his silver Kimber .45 from his shoulder holster.
He fired two hollow-point rounds straight into the door hinge mechanism.
The deafening blasts filled the sealed cabin with cordite smoke.
Five seconds.
The lock fractured.
Adrien kicked the door with both heels.
The armored door swung open against the rushing eighty-mile-per-hour wind.
The road rushed beneath him, a blur of wet asphalt and gravel.
Four seconds.
The driver tried to throw the wheel toward the shoulder.
Adrien grabbed the edge of the door frame.
He lunged backward into the freezing air.
Three seconds.
He hit the grassy embankment hard.
His shoulder took the initial impact.
Bone screamed in agony.
He rolled down the slope into the muddy ditch.
Two seconds.
The black sedan drifted into a concrete highway barrier three hundred yards ahead.
One second.
The fireball illuminated the gray sky like an exploding star.
The shockwave tore through the ditch, ripping dead grass from the frozen dirt.
Shrapnel whistled through the air above his head, slicing branches into matchsticks.
Adrien pressed his face into the cold mud.
Burning debris rained down across the highway.
Heat rolled over his back, singeing the collar of his wool coat.
Silence followed.
Only the hiss of burning rubber remained.
Adrien pushed himself up slowly.
His left arm hung numb.
Blood dripped from a cut above his left eyebrow, stinging his eye.
He wiped it away with the back of his dirty sleeve.
The driver was gone.
There was nothing left of the car but a blackened chassis burning fiercely on the road.
Daniel Mercer had tried to kill him on his own driveway.
And Isabella had known.
"He knows about the vault. Run before five."
She had not been warning Mercer.
She had been trying to leave a trail.
Adrien checked his wristwatch.
The crystal was cracked, but the hands moved.
Four-ten.
Her train departed in twenty minutes.
He climbed the muddy embankment back to the service road.
A delivery van had stopped fifty yards back, its hazard lights blinking through the smoke.
The driver had stepped out, holding a phone to his ear, staring at the burning wreckage.
Adrien did not hesitate.
He drew his firearm and walked through the drifting smoke.
The van driver turned, saw the blood on Adrien's face and the gun in his hand, and immediately dropped the phone.
"Keys," Adrien said.
His voice was dead calm.
The man threw the key ring onto the pavement and raised both hands.
"Take it! Just don't shoot!"
Adrien picked up the keys without breaking stride.
He climbed into the cab of the battered white van.
He threw the gear into drive and slammed the gas pedal.
The transmission ground violently before catching.
He tore past the burning wreckage of his town car.
North Station was seven miles east through dense industrial suburbs.
His left arm began to throb with blinding pain.
Dislocated shoulder.
He gritted his teeth, hooked his left elbow around the passenger seat frame, and threw his weight backward.
A wet crunch echoed inside the cab.
The joint popped back into its socket.
Adrien gasped, black spots dancing across his vision.
He blinked the darkness away.
He pressed the pedal to the floorboards.
Why hadn't she told him?
She had stood in the foyer with her coat buttoned.
She had looked at him as if she were already dead.
"Goodbye, Mr. Voss."
She knew Mercer was going to blow the car.
She had taken the fall to get Mercer away from the estate before Adrien arrived.
Or she had sold him out completely.
The needle on the speedometer climbed past eighty.
The skyline of the city rose through the November drizzle.
If she reached that train, she was a ghost.
And if Mercer got to her first, she was a corpse.
Adrien took the off-ramp on two screaming tires.
The grand stone arches of North Station appeared ahead.
May you like
Four-twenty-two.
Eight minutes before the whistle.
