Chapter 2 - Second Shot on Dearborn
The bullet chipped a crater of red brick into the masonry, showering them with sharp stone dust.
“Get down!” Javier roared, diving left and pulling his weapon as he returned fire toward the upper fire escape of the adjacent warehouse.
Victor didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Khloe by the waist, lifting her off her feet and slamming both of them down behind the heavy iron frame of a commercial dumpster. The stench of rotting garbage and wet cardboard hit them instantly, but the metal walls offered a barrier against whatever was coming from the shadows above.
“I thought you said the sniper abandoned the position!” Khloe screamed over the deafening crack of a second and third suppressed round chewing through the metal of the dumpster.
“That was the hotel!” Victor yelled back, his eyes darting through the falling sleet to map the rooftops. “This is a secondary extraction team. They aren’t trying to kill me anymore—they’re trying to eliminate the witness.”
Javier fired three rapid shots upward, emptying his magazine before sliding behind a concrete pillar. “Boss, the alley is boxed! A black van just cut off the exit at street level!”
Victor looked down at Khloe. Her chest was heaving, water dripping from her nose and chin. She was trapped in a war she didn’t understand, pulled into a world where blood and concrete were the only currency.
“Can you run?” Victor asked.
“In heels?” she gasped, staring down at her ruined, soaked pumps.
“Take them off.”
Without waiting, Victor ripped off his tuxedo jacket, exposing his broad shoulders in a damp white dress shirt, and threw it over her trembling shoulders. The fabric smelled of cedar, expensive cologne, and ozone.
“When I say go, you run straight for the kitchen loading bay door behind us,” Victor instructed, his voice cutting through the gunfire with absolute authority. “Javier will cover the street exit. Do not look back. Do not stop.”
“And you?” Khloe asked, her fingers clutching the lapels of his oversized jacket.
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“I’m going to go say hello to Marcus.”
Before she could protest, Victor kicked open the side panel of the dumpster, exposing himself to the alley. A bullet whined past his shoulder, tearing a clean hole through his dress shirt, but he was already moving, vaulting over a stack of wooden crates toward the rusted exterior ladder leading to the roof.
