Chapter 7 - Blood on the Snow
Daniel didn't drop the drive.
He didn't blink. The red dot hovered between his eyes, steady as a heartbeat, but Daniel had looked death in the face for four years on the freezing concrete of Fourteenth Street. When a man has already lost his wife, his home, his career, and his name, fear becomes an obsolete luxury.
“Shoot me,” Daniel said, his voice flat, echoing down the narrow corridor. “Shoot me, and the emergency fire-suppression halon gas dumps into this sealed chamber in three seconds. We all suffocate together. The difference is, my life hasn't been worth five cents for four years. What’s your contractor rate worth when your lungs turn to jelly?”
The lead operative hesitated. A quarter of a second.
It was all Daniel needed.
Daniel grabbed the industrial fire hose mounted to the wall beside him and yanked the emergency pressure valve. A two-hundred-pound jet of pressurized water and chemical foam exploded down the corridor, slamming into the three operatives with the force of an oncoming vehicle.
The operatives were swept off their feet, their weapons firing wildly into the concrete ceiling as gallons of high-pressure water flooded the narrow hallway.
“Run!” Daniel shouted, gripping Evelyn’s hand.
They bolted up the utility staircase, skipping steps, the roar of the water and the muffled curses of the operatives fading beneath them. They didn't stop at the ground floor; they knew the lobby would be a kill box. Daniel shoved Evelyn through the loading dock exit into the alley behind the tower.
The blizzard struck them like a physical blow.
The temperature had dropped to twelve degrees. Six inches of fresh powder blanketed the alley, muting the city into an eerie, ghostly silence. Across the street, the black Escalade they had used earlier was gone, but parked beside the industrial dumpsters was an old, rust-spotted Ford F-250 with a snowplow bracket mounted to the front—a maintenance truck Daniel had noticed during his first day on the job.
Daniel smashed the driver’s side window with the heavy steel hardware token, reached inside, and unlocked the door. He shoved Evelyn into the passenger seat, tore the plastic cowl from beneath the steering column, and crossed the ignition wires with brutal familiarity.
The old V8 engine roared to life with a guttural, un-muffled cough of black exhaust.
Daniel threw the truck into reverse, slamming the rear bumper through the alley gate just as two black Vanguard Suburbans skidded onto Fourteenth Street, their high beams cutting through the swirling snow like searchlights.
“Hold on!” Daniel yelled.
He slammed the transmission into drive, stomped the accelerator, and sent the heavy truck fishtailing into the middle of Broadway.
The chase was cinematic madness. The Denver streets were virtually deserted, buried beneath drifts of white snow. The two Suburbans chased them like hunting dogs, their heavy four-wheel-drive systems chewing through the powder, closing the distance with terrifying speed.
A burst of automatic gunfire shattered the rear window of the Ford, showering Daniel and Evelyn with tempered glass and freezing air.
“They’re going to pit maneuver us!” Evelyn screamed, clutching the dashboard.
“Not in three feet of unplowed powder, they won't,” Daniel grunted, his eyes narrowed against the blizzard.
Instead of heading toward the highway, Daniel swung the wheel hard to the right, plunging the heavy truck down the narrow access ramp leading to the sunken Cherry Creek bike path.
The truck hit the pedestrian ramp with a bone-jarring crash, the heavy suspension groaning as the vehicle bounced over concrete retaining walls and slid sideways along the frozen, snow-covered canal path.
The first Suburban attempted to follow, but its driver misjudged the narrow concrete entrance. The vehicle clipped the retaining wall at fifty miles an hour, flipping end-over-end in a shower of sparks, shattered fiberglass, and shredded tires before crashing upside down into the freezing waters of the creek.
The second Suburban backed off, its headlights illuminating the canal from the bridge above, unable to follow down the narrow pedestrian path.
Daniel drove two miles through the dark canal bed until the truck’s radiator hissed its final breath, steam erupting from beneath the crumpled hood. The engine sputtered, seized, and died.
Silence returned. Heavy, suffocating, freezing silence.
Daniel kicked open the driver’s door. The wind howled through the concrete underpass. He turned to Evelyn. Her lips were blue, her hair dusted with ice, but her eyes were wide with pure, raw adrenaline.
“Are you whole?” Daniel asked, his breath billowing in white clouds.
“I’m alive,” she said, her voice shaking violently from the cold. “Where… where are we?”
“Under the Colfax viaduct,” Daniel said, pulling his old wool jacket tighter around his shoulders. He reached into his pocket and felt the cold, hard steel of the hardware token. “My old neighborhood.”
He helped her down from the cab into the knee-deep snow.
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“We have five hours before the board meeting,” Daniel said, looking toward the faint orange glow of the city skyline through the blizzard. “We need a place to get warm, rewrite this firmware patch, and stay alive until nine AM. And I know the only place in Denver where nobody will ever think to look for Evelyn Hart.”
***
