Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
Mud sprayed across my back as rounds tore through the birch trees around me.
I ran with everything I had, my lungs burning, branches lashing across my cheeks, tearing open shallow cuts. The cold rain soaked through Leo’s jacket, heavy and freezing, but the adrenaline surging through my bloodstream drowned out the pain.
Behind me, the tactical lights of two pursuers bobbed through the dense timber.
“Target is heading downhill toward the creek!” one of them yelled into his radio. “Non-lethal authorization revoked! Take him down!”
I hit the rocky bank of the swollen mountain creek, lost my footing on a moss-covered boulder, and crashed hard into the freezing, knee-deep current. The shock of the icy water knocked the wind from my chest.
I scrambled up, scrambling behind a massive upturned hemlock root ball just as three rounds chipped chunks of shale off the rock face inches above my head.
I was trapped.
The creek canyon was a dead end—a sheer twenty-foot granite wall rose on the far side, slick with rain and ice.
The two tactical operators emerged from the brush, moving in a synchronized wedge, their rifles raised, thermal optics glowing faint green on their mounts.
“Come out from behind the root, Caldwell,” the lead operator called out, his voice calm, professional, and terrifying. “Hands interlaced behind your head. Don't make this messy.”
I pressed my back against the wet roots, my hands empty, my chest heaving.
*Snap.*
A branch cracked behind the two gunmen.
The rear operator spun around, raising his rifle—but he was too late.
A shadow dropped from the low branch of an overhanging pine like an avenging ghost. Leo slammed into the man’s back, driving him face-first into the freezing mud of the creek bed. In one fluid, brutal movement born of years of survival, Leo drove his elbow into the base of the man’s neck, knocking him unconscious, and scooped up the dropped tactical rifle.
The lead operator spun back, his finger tightening on the trigger—
*Crack!*
A shot from Leo’s .38 revolver echoed through the canyon. The round struck the operator’s shoulder armor, knocking him off-balance into the rushing water. Before he could recover, Leo was on him, pressing the muzzle of the captured rifle directly beneath the man’s Kevlar chin strap.
“Drop it,” Leo snarled, his voice pure venom. “Drop it or your brains paint this granite.”
The operator let go of his rifle. It splashed into the creek and was instantly swept away by the dark current.
I stepped out from behind the root ball, soaked, shivering, and bleeding, but alive.
Leo looked at me, his chest heaving, rain plastering his hair to his forehead. He reached down with his free hand and hauled me up onto the gravel bank.
“You’re a terrible decoy, Ryan,” he breathed, a fierce, feral grin breaking across his bruised face. “You run like an architect.”
“And you shoot like an outlaw,” I coughed out, leaning against his shoulder. “Where’s Arthur? Where are the girls?”
“Safe,” Leo said, nodding up toward the ridgeline. “They reached the county road. Arthur had a second backup vehicle hidden at the old logging mill—an old Subaru. Emily has the girls inside. They’re thirty minutes south by now.”
“What about Sterling?”
Leo’s smile vanished. His eyes turned black as midnight.
“Sterling is still at the cabin,” Leo said quietly. “Waiting for his men to bring him our bodies.”
We climbed out of the creek canyon, moving silently through the woods, circling back toward the cabin from the high ground above the driveway.
Down in the clearing, the scene was chaotic.
The steam from the shattered radiators had cleared. One Suburban was idling with its doors open. Richard Sterling stood near the tailgate, frantically typing on an encrypted satellite phone, his expensive wool coat drenched, his composure completely shattered.
“I don't care about the local sheriff!” Sterling was shouting into the phone. “Get the private jet prepped at Albany International! We need to be airborne for Grand Cayman before the morning banking wire clears!”
Leo and I stepped out from the treeline together.
Side by side.
Two identical men, dressed in matching mud-spattered clothes, moving in perfect lockstep down the gravel driveway.
Sterling snapped his phone shut, turning around.
When he saw us—two identical faces emerging from the black forest like ghosts materialized from his darkest sins—the phone slipped from his trembling, leather-gloved fingers, splashing into the mud.
“No...” Sterling stammered, backing away until his spine hit the armored panel of his SUV. “No, that’s... that’s impossible. Julian swore the other one died at birth.”
“Julian lied to everyone, Richard,” I said, my voice ringing clear and steady through the drumming rain. “He lied to his wife. He lied to me. And he certainly lied to you.”
Sterling reached desperately into his coat for a snub-nosed pistol.
Leo raised the captured tactical rifle, firing a single round that punched through the sheet metal of the Suburban’s rear quarter panel, an inch above Sterling’s ear.
Sterling shrieked, dropping the gun into the slush, sinking to his knees on the gravel, his hands raised in pathetic surrender.
“Listen to me!” Sterling wept, his aristocratic arrogance melting into sniveling cowardice. “There’s forty million dollars in the offshore trust! Forty million! We can split it three ways! You can have your lives back! You can build whatever you want! Just give me the ledger! Let me walk away!”
I walked up to Sterling, stopping two feet from where he knelt in the dirt.
I pulled the flip phone from my pocket—the burner phone Leo had given Emily.
The screen was lit up. An active call had been running for twenty-two minutes.
On the other end of the line, a calm, authoritative voice spoke through the speaker:
*“This is Special Agent Marcus Vance, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albany Field Office. Richard Sterling, we have recorded your full confession, your location, and the authorization of lethal force against protected witnesses. Federal tactical units are currently four minutes out from your coordinates. Do not move.”*
Sterling stared at the tiny green screen, his face turning the color of skim milk.
“Vance?” Sterling whispered, his voice trembling. “Arthur Vance’s son?”
“My brother,” Arthur’s voice came over the speaker from the backseat of the Subaru miles away. “You should have checked who was running the field office before you started setting fires in my county, Sterling.”
May you like
In the distance, the wail of dozens of sirens began echoing through the mountain passes, their red and blue lights painting the underside of the rain clouds in brilliant, triumphant color.
***
