Chapter 24 - The Ambush on Route 9
"Brace!" Liam shouted.
He didn't swerve. Swerving on black ice meant rolling down the forty-foot embankment into the frozen river below. Instead, Liam dropped the SUV into low gear, jammed the accelerator to the floorboards, and aimed our reinforced steel bumper straight at the oncoming truck's front wheel quarter-panel.
The impact was deafening.
The sound of crumpling steel and shattering polycarbonate exploded through the cabin. The sheer momentum of our armored vehicle violently spun the pickup truck sideways, sending it careening off the icy shoulder and crashing backward into an ancient pine tree.
Our SUV shuddered violently, the tires screeching on the asphalt as Liam fought the steering wheel, regaining traction through sheer mechanical force and driver skill.
Maya let out a muffled squeak from beneath the wool blanket, but she didn't scream. She stayed down, exactly as I had told her.
"Hold on!" Liam barked, swinging the vehicle onto the cleared lanes of Route 9 South.
Through the rear glass, I saw headlights flick on in the distance behind us. Two more vehicles—sleek, dark SUVs—had just turned onto the highway from the northern ridge. They were closing the distance fast, their high-output engines roaring over the whistling blizzard.
"They have our transponder frequency," Liam muttered, his knuckles bone-white on the steering wheel. "Or Lindqvist had a tracker planted in that yellow envelope."
My heart stopped. I immediately dumped the contents of the envelope onto my lap, tearing the cardboard seams apart. Tucked deep inside the bottom gusset was a tiny, coin-sized magnetic beacon blinking with a faint red LED pulse.
"Found it!" I said.
"Roll down your window two inches!" Liam ordered. "Toss it on the bridge!"
Ahead of us, the steel suspension bridge spanning the icy expanse of the Hudson River loomed through the driving snow. As the SUV roared across the steel grating, I cracked the window, the freezing wind stinging my face like needles, and hurled the black tracking disc out into the void. It bounced once against the steel truss and vanished into the roaring, black waters hundreds of feet below.
"Now we disappear," Liam said, cutting the vehicle’s exterior lights completely as we reached the southern exit ramp.
He veered off the interstate into a commercial access road lined with dormant distribution warehouses and abandoned gravel quarries. He pulled the SUV deep into an unlit covered loading bay beneath a collapsed sheet-metal awning and killed the engine.
Silence descended upon us, thick and suffocating.
Outside, thirty seconds later, the two chasing SUVs thundered past on the elevated highway above, their headlights sweeping fruitlessly through the blizzard, chasing a ghost signal that was already sinking to the bottom of the Hudson River.
Inside our vehicle, none of us breathed until the rumble of their engines faded into the howling wind.
"Mommy?" Maya whispered from the back seat, her voice trembling. "Is it over?"
I climbed into the back seat, wrapping my arms around her trembling body, pulling her tight against my chest. "You were so brave, Maya. So unbelievably brave. We’re safe right now. Mommy and Liam have got you."
Liam turned in his seat, his gaze resting on me with an intensity that made the cold air between us feel electric. The polished CEO of Vance Capital was gone; in his place stood a man who had faced death without blinking, whose only focus was the survival of the woman and child in his car.
"Beacon is forty miles south," Liam said, his voice quiet. "The bank opens at 9:00 AM. Kroll’s men will realize they lost the tracker within twenty minutes. They’ll sweep every regional bankJulian ever had an affiliation with. If we aren't standing at that vault the second the doors unlock, we’ll never get Julian’s cipher."
"And if we get it?" I asked, looking down at the notebook in my hands. "What do we do with sixty million dollars of syndicate money, Liam?"
May you like
Liam reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently cupping the side of my face, wiping away a smear of soot and melted snow.
"We don't give it to Kroll," Liam said softly, his eyes burning with lethal resolve. "And we don't let Julian use it to bargain for his pathetic life. We use it to destroy them both."
