Chapter 8 - THE VOICE ON THE RADIO
The radio on the workbench crackled with static.
Adrien had ripped it from an old emergency battery pack under the bench.
A voice cut through the white noise.
It was Marco's voice.
"...searching the riverbank at Sector Four. No sign of bodies."
Then another voice answered.
Silas Vance.
"Keep looking. Mercer wants proof before the six o'clock meeting."
"If they survived the drop, they'll freeze before sunrise."
Adrien picked up the hand mic.
He didn't press the transmit button.
He just listened.
"What about the Voss house?" Vance asked.
"Secured," Marco replied.
"Mercer's men are tearing the library apart looking for the secondary safe."
Adrien looked at Isabella.
Her face was illuminated by the flickering kerosene flame.
The color was returning to her cheeks, but her eyes were dark with exhaustion.
"Marco betrayed you," she said softly.
"Marco was bought," Adrien corrected.
"Everyone has an expiration date."
"Did you think I had one?"
Adrien met her gaze.
For two years, she had prepared his meals.
She had laid out his clean linen.
She had stood silently in the corner while men in thousand-dollar suits kissed his ring and begged for dock space.
He had thought she was invisible.
He had thought she was safe from his world.
"I thought you were the only clean thing in that house," he said.
The words hung in the quiet boathouse.
Isabella looked down at the coffee can flame.
"I hated you when I arrived," she whispered.
"I wanted to poison your coffee every morning."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because one night you came home with blood on your hands."
"You sat in the library alone in the dark."
"You didn't call for a doctor."
"You just sat there looking at your father's portrait."
She looked up at him.
"And you looked more trapped than I was."
Adrien said nothing.
He checked his Kimber's magazine.
Nine rounds.
No spare clips.
Outside, the distant rumble of an engine broke the silence.
Tires rolling slowly over wet gravel.
Adrien moved to the crack in the wooden wall.
A single pickup truck was crawling down the dirt track toward the boathouse.
A spotter light was mounted on the cab, sweeping the marsh grass.
It was one of Silas Vance's dock runners.
"Put out the fire," Adrien whispered.
Isabella immediately kicked a pile of dry sand over the coffee can.
The flame died.
The room plunged into absolute blackness.
The spotter light hit the boathouse wall, sending bright slivers of light slicing through the wooden gaps.
The engine stopped.
A truck door opened with a squeak.
Heavy boots crunched on the gravel outside.
"Hey! Check the shack!" a man yelled.
Two sets of footsteps approached the rotting wooden door.
Adrien drew his Kimber.
He stepped behind the door frame, melting into the shadows.
He reached back with his left hand and pushed Isabella down behind a pile of rusted outboard motors.
The latch rattled.
The door swung inward with a groan.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, illuminating the empty blanket on the floorboards.
"They were here," a voice said.
A burly man in an oilskin jacket stepped inside, holding a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Behind him stood a younger man with a machete.
"Feel the floor," the first man said. "Still warm."
Adrien stepped out from behind the door.
He struck the first man across the temple with the heavy steel slide of his gun.
The man dropped like a sack of wet salt.
The second man turned, raising the machete.
Adrien grabbed the man's wrist, twisted the arm upward until the tendon snapped, and drove his knee into the man's solar plexus.
The young man gasped for air and collapsed.
Adrien snatched the shotgun before it hit the floorboards.
He knelt over the first man and dragged a heavy set of keys and a two-way radio from his belt.
"Get dressed," Adrien told Isabella without looking back.
She had already pulled on the dry canvas mechanic coveralls hanging from a peg on the wall.
"We have wheels," Adrien said.
He stepped out into the misty drizzle.
The pickup truck was idling on the gravel path.
Its headlights cut through the fog like twin spears.
Adrien climbed into the driver's seat and threw the shotgun onto the rack behind him.
Isabella climbed into the passenger side, pulling the oversized canvas collar up around her neck.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
Adrien turned the steering wheel hard toward the city.
"To my father's bank."
"The summit is at six."
"Mercer wants to show the council the silver key."
May you like
Adrien floored the gas.
"Let's make sure he has an audience."
