Chapter 9 - Blood and Iron
Richard Cross didn't sign.
Men like Richard Cross—men who had spent thirty years buying judges, governors, and police commissioners—never believe they can bleed until the bullet is already tearing through their flesh.
“Kill them,” Cross screamed, scrambling backward behind two of his Blackwell mercenaries. “Kill them all! I’ll pay ten million to whoever drops the girl!”
The warehouse erupted into gunfire.
The crack of suppressed carbines shattered the heavy air, sparks flying off the steel flank of the locomotive as rounds ricocheted into the concrete floor.
Mason didn't hesitate.
Before the first bullet could travel ten feet, his arm locked around my waist and he tackled me behind the massive, cast-iron wheel of the train’s undercarriage. We hit the concrete hard, his massive frame shielding every inch of my body as concrete dust and shredded lead sprayed overhead.
“What the hell are you doing here?!” Mason roared over the deafening cacophony of gunfire, his hands frantically checking my arms, my face, my neck for blood. “Are you out of your mind?! Where are the kids?!”
“The kids are locked in the armored vault car on the rear spur!” I yelled back, spitting grit from my lips, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Isabelle told me everything, Mason! Her father and Henry orchestrated the whole thing three years ago! If I hadn't brought Briggs, you’d be dead right now!”
Mason’s gray eyes flashed with a lethal mixture of fury, terror, and absolute, overwhelming awe.
“You drove a train into a warehouse,” he breathed, his voice cracking beneath the thunder of Briggs returning fire with the automatic shotgun above us.
“I told you,” I said, racking another shell into the chamber of the Remington, “I’m not a victim anymore!”
A heavy burst of automatic fire ripped through the sheet metal just six inches above our heads. Briggs grunted from the locomotive cab, a streak of blood suddenly painting his arm as he ducked back inside the armored hatch.
“Mason!” Briggs yelled down through the access grate. “Cross’s men outside are bringing up an anti-material rifle! If they punch through the train’s boiler, this whole dock is going up in steam!”
Mason leaned out from behind the train wheel, his eyes scanning the cavernous room.
Across the warehouse floor, Henry Calder was cowering behind a rusted forklift, his pristine wool coat covered in dirt, his hands clamped over his ears like a terrified child. Meanwhile, Richard Cross was backing toward an open industrial exit that led straight out to the private Blackwell docks where an escape launch was idling in the river.
“Stay here,” Mason ordered, his hand gripping the back of my neck, pulling my face up to his. He pressed a hard, desperate kiss against my mouth that tasted of gunpowder and raw adrenaline. “Do not move from behind this wheel, Nora.”
“Mason, don't!” I screamed.
He didn't listen.
Mason lunged from the cover of the train like a shadow released from hell.
A Blackwell mercenary stepped out from behind a stack of pallets to intercept him, raising a tactical rifle. Mason didn't slow down. He closed the gap in half a second, his shoulder slamming into the mercenary’s sternum with the force of an oncoming truck, driving the man into the concrete floor. Mason wrenched the rifle from the mercenary’s grip with one fluid, brutal twist of his wrists, struck the man across the jaw with the butt of the weapon, and rolled smoothly behind an overturned container.
Two more gunmen opened fire on Mason’s position, pinning him down behind a wall of corrugated steel that was rapidly turning into Swiss cheese.
I looked at Henry Calder cowering behind the forklift.
Then I looked at Richard Cross, who had almost reached the river exit, clutching the briefcase containing the offshore trust bonds that could fund an underground war for the next ten years.
*No,* I thought. *Not again. You don't get to walk away and hunt my children from the shadows.*
I stood up from behind the train wheel.
“Nora, no!” Briggs screamed from the cab.
I ignored him. I sprinted across the open concrete, keeping low, using the line of rusted shipping crates as cover. The gunfire was centered entirely on Mason’s position fifty yards away; none of the Blackwell mercenaries expected a mother in a cashmere sweater to flank them from the blind side.
I rounded the corner of the final container just as Richard Cross reached the heavy metal exit doors.
Cross turned, hearing my boots crunch on the shattered glass. When he saw me holding the twelve-gauge, his smug, aristocratic face twisted into a grotesque mask of panic. He reached frantically for the Colt .45 at his hip.
“Don't do it, Richard,” I said, my voice dead, flat, and absolute.
Cross hesitated, his hand hovering over his holster. “You won't shoot me, nurse. You don't have the stomach for it. You take care of sick people. You wipe running noses.”
“I take care of my children,” I said.
Cross lunged for his gun.
I didn't aim for his chest. I aimed low.
I pulled the trigger.
The boom of the twelve-gauge was deafening inside the enclosed corridor. The heavy buckshot shredded the concrete at Cross’s feet, the ricocheting shrapnel tearing through his right shin and shattering his knee.
Cross shrieked, collapsing instantly against the metal doorframe, clutching his ruined leg as blood pooled across the gray concrete. His Colt clattered across the floor, sliding harmlessly into a drainage grate.
Behind me, the gunfire abruptly ceased.
I turned around, the smoking shotgun still braced against my shoulder.
Mason stood twenty feet away. He had eliminated the remaining two Blackwell gunmen; both were unconscious or dead on the floor. Mason’s dark Henley was torn at the shoulder, revealing a shallow graze that was bleeding down his bicep, and his knuckles were split and bloody.
He looked at Richard Cross writhing on the floor, screaming in agony.
Then he looked at me, standing over the billionaire who had tried to destroy our lives, holding an empty shotgun with smoke still drifting from the barrel.
Slowly, Mason walked toward me.
His chest was heaving. His gray eyes were wide, dark, and filled with an expression that bordered on absolute reverence. He reached out with one trembling, blood-stained hand and gently took the heavy shotgun from my grip, letting it clatter to the concrete floor.
Then, he pulled me against him.
He buried his face in my hair, his arms locking around my waist so tightly I couldn't breathe, his entire massive frame shaking with a violent, shuddering tremor.
“You’re insane,” he whispered into my neck, his voice breaking with tears. “You are completely, utterly insane.”
“I told you,” I choked out, wrapping my arms around his neck, burying my face in his chest as the adrenaline finally began to drain from my veins, leaving me shaking. “I’m not letting them take you away from us.”
Behind us, a pathetic, whimpering sound echoed from the center of the warehouse.
Henry Calder crawled out from behind the forklift. His silver hair was wild, his knees were scraped, and tears of pure terror were tracking through the grime on his aristocratic face.
“Mason...” Henry sobbed, reaching out a trembling hand toward his son. “Mason, please. Call an ambulance. Richard is bleeding to death. We can fix this... we can still fix this...”
Mason slowly turned around, keeping his arm securely locked around my waist.
He looked down at his father. There was no rage in Mason’s face anymore. There was no hatred. There was only a cold, crushing indifference that was a hundred times more devastating than anger.
“There’s nothing to fix, Henry,” Mason said quietly.
Briggs stepped out from the locomotive, flanked by four fresh security guards who had just secured the outer perimeter.
“Briggs,” Mason commanded, never taking his eyes off his broken father. “Call the FBI. Give them the unredacted files from the safe in my office. Hand over Richard Cross, Henry Calder, and every Blackwell asset we have locked in the holding cells.”
Henry gasped, his face draining of all color. “The FBI?! Mason, you’ll destroy the Calder name! You’ll go to prison too!”
“I won't go to prison,” Mason said coldly. “Because Nora and I just turned state’s evidence on the entire syndicate. As for the Calder name...”
Mason looked down at me, his eyes softening into a deep, unbreakable warmth.
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“...my children will build a new one.”
***
