Chapter 9 - The Broken Empire
The silence in the warehouse was thicker than the storm outside.
Marco was crouched twenty feet away behind an industrial forklift, reloading his magazine with steady, mechanical precision. Jack didn't answer Moretti. He kept his back pressed against the cold steel of the shipping container, his eyes scanning the narrow corridors between the stacked cargo.
“You’re running out of room, Jack!” Moretti’s voice bounced off the corrugated ceiling. “Miller’s boys are sitting two miles up the road. When my people are done here, Miller writes up a report about a tragic turf war between rival cartels. Nobody will ever look for those drives. Nobody will ever ask why Emily Carter’s pretty little body washed up on Castle Island.”
Jack’s jaw clenched so hard the bone looked ready to splinter through the skin.
He looked down at me. Beside his boots sat a black waterproof hard-shell case containing the mirrored server drives from the Apex network.
“Emily,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the dripping water. “When I move, you take the case. The back bay door has an emergency manual release—the red lever on the left frame. Pull it, hit the slip, and drop into the boat. The keys are in the ignition.”
“Jack, don't—”
“Go,” he commanded.
He didn't wait for my agreement. Jack stepped out from behind the container, exposing himself to the center aisle, and fired four deafening rounds down the corridor.
Muzzle flashes lit up the warehouse like strobe lights.
“He’s on the left!” someone shouted from Moretti’s line.
Automatic gunfire erupted instantly, chewing into the concrete where Jack had just been. Marco broke from his cover at the same moment, firing two heavy bursts toward the catwalks above, creating a crossfire that forced Moretti’s gunmen to duck behind the steel stanchions.
*Now.*
I grabbed the handle of the hard-shell case. It was heavy, pulling against my shoulder, but the adrenaline surging through my veins turned my limbs to iron.
I scrambled on my hands and knees around the rear of the container, staying low beneath the line of fire. Bullets snapped through the air above me, whining as they ricocheted off the corrugated iron walls.
I reached the red lever on the rear bay door.
I threw my entire body weight onto it. The rusted mechanism groaned, then gave way with a sharp metallic clunk. The heavy chain rattled, and the bottom of the roll-up door lifted six inches from the concrete floor.
I dropped to my stomach and shoved the hard case through the gap onto the rain-soaked wooden planks of the pier outside.
Just as I prepared to crawl through after it, a shadow fell across the gap.
A heavy boot stepped onto the wooden planks directly in front of the door.
I froze.
Slowly, I looked up.
Standing in the downpour outside the bay door was Dominic Moretti. He held a snub-nosed revolver in his right hand, his ivory-handled cane discarded on the wet planks beside him. Rain dripped from his silver hair into his dark, triumphant eyes.
“Going somewhere, clever girl?” Moretti sneered, raising the revolver toward my head.
My breath stopped. I was trapped on my stomach, half-in, half-out of the door, completely defenseless.
“Jack thought he could beat me with a college graduate and a press release,” Moretti mocked, stepping closer, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Tell his father I said hello when you see him in—”
A gunshot cracked through the warehouse behind me.
Moretti’s eyes went wide. A small, dark hole blossomed in the center of his chest, right through the silk fabric of his expensive overcoat.
He looked down in disbelief, then collapsed forward, crashing onto the wooden planks of the pier with a dull, wet thud.
Behind me, Jack lowered his weapon.
He was leaning heavily against the steel frame of the doorway, his white shirt stained with crimson across his left shoulder where a bullet had grazed him. Smoke curled from the barrel of his gun. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his face pale, but his gray eyes were locked onto mine with fierce, unyielding intensity.
“Emily,” he breathed, stumbling forward.
I scrambled the rest of the way under the door, threw my arms around his waist, and caught him before his knees could buckle.
“I’ve got you,” I gasped, the cold rain soaking us both as the harbor wind roared around the pier. “I’ve got you, Jack.”
Marco emerged from the warehouse behind him, limping slightly, his face smeared with soot and blood. “Clear,” Marco muttered, looking down at Moretti’s motionless body. “All four of them inside are down. But Miller’s dispatch radio is active. We’ve got state police sirens crossing the Broadway Bridge right now.”
Jack leaned against me, his heavy arm draped over my shoulders, his breath hot against my wet skin.
“The drives,” Jack murmured, gesturing toward the black case on the dock.
“I have them,” I said.
Jack looked out across the black water of Boston Harbor. In the distance, the blue and red flashing lights of emergency vehicles were already reflecting off the low clouds over the city skyline.
Northbridge was finished. The glass towers, the marble lobbies, the corporate veneer—it was all going to burn in the morning news cycle.
Jack reached into his pocket with trembling fingers, pulled out a small titanium flash drive, and pressed it into my hand, closing my wet fingers over it.
“The Swiss accounts,” Jack whispered, his voice cracking with exhaustion. “Everything I built that wasn't tied to my father’s name. It’s registered under your mother’s maiden name. It’s clean, Emily. You can take the boat, hit the South Shore, and catch a flight out of Logan before Miller even knows you were here.”
I stared at the metal drive in my palm, then looked back at Jack.
His face was streaked with rain and blood. He looked like a fallen king standing on the edge of a burning kingdom.
“And what happens to you?” I asked.
Jack offered a faint, tragic smile—the same smile he had given me in the lobby when I told him his tie was terrible.
May you like
“I’m Jack Whitmore,” he said softly. “I don't run from my city.”
***
