Chapter 5 - The Catwalk Ambush
“Hold your fire,” I commanded quietly, stepping in front of Eleanor and gently pushing the barrel of her pistol down toward the floor. “We don't need a shootout. We need an exit.”
The footsteps were right outside the glass office door now. Shadows flickered across the frosted glass panels as two men with heavy flashlights and drawn handguns approached the threshold.
“Break the glass! Check the office!” shouted the lead gunman.
Instead of waiting for them to breach, I stepped back, grabbed a heavy oak filing chair by the backrest, and hurled it straight through the center glass pane of the office door.
Crash!
Glass showered across the metal catwalk outside. As the two guards instinctively flinched and ducked away from the shattered shards, I vaulted through the broken window frame right onto the open catwalk.
Before the first guard could recover his balance, I closed the distance in two strides, swept his weapon hand upward, and delivered a precise palm-strike to his chin that sent him skidding backward into the railing.
The second guard raised his pistol toward my chest, his finger tightening on the trigger.
From inside the office doorway, Eleanor didn't hesitate. She stepped out into the open, squared her stance with the textbook precision of an expert marksman, and fired a single warning shot that zipped past the guard’s ear, shattering a light fixture overhead in a shower of white-hot sparks.
“Drop the weapon! Federal marshals are securing the perimeter right now!” Eleanor shouted, her voice ringing with absolute, unyielding authority.
The guard froze, his eyes darting from Eleanor’s steady gun barrel to his unconscious partner lying on the grating, then down toward the exit where the distant wail of approaching police sirens suddenly began to echo through the harbor fog.
He slowly let his pistol slide from his fingers, kicking it away across the metal floor.
“Smart choice,” I said, stepping over and slapping industrial zip-ties around his wrists.
I turned back to Eleanor, who lowered her pistol and exhaled a long, steady breath, her hand resting firmly on the heavy leather ledger tucked under her arm.
“Federal marshals?” Eleanor raised an eyebrow, a slight, knowing smile touching her lips as she looked at me. “Since when did you call the feds?”
“Since I realized Victor’s accountant had an active federal warrant out of Chicago for tax evasion,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket to check the time. “Come on. Let’s get to the truck before the real cavalry arrives.”
We moved swiftly down the catwalk, heading toward the rear emergency exit while the wailing sirens outside grew louder by the second.
We slipped out into the cold fog of the pier, the ledger and the flash drive secured safely in our possession, ready to deliver the final blow to the men who had threatened our family.
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As we reached the edge of the parking lot and climbed back into our truck, my phone buzzed violently in my hand with an incoming text message from an unknown number.
I glanced down at the screen. The text contained a single, chilling photograph taken less than two minutes ago through the hospital window upstairs, showing Evelyn sleeping peacefully in her bed—with a red laser dot resting squarely against her pillow.
