Chapter 27 - The Bloodline Broken
David Vance hissed in pain as the ceramic blade pierced his shoulder muscle, his grip on Claire slackening for a split second.
Claire utilized that fraction of a moment to kick viciously against his kneecap, breaking his balance.
He stumbled backward, ripping the blade from his flesh with a sickening squelch and tossing it aside as if it were a splinter.
"Impressive," Vance breathed, circling her like a wounded wolf in the moonlight. "Your brother didn't last half this long in the valley."
The mention of her brother ignited a white-hot fury deep within Claire’s soul.
"Thomas died saving his men," Claire snarled, closing the distance with lethal speed. "You survived by running like a coward!"
She unleashed a flurry of close-quarters strikes—a brutal sequence perfected through years of combat deployments.
Palm strike to the solar plexus, elbow to the jaw, sweep to the injured knee.
Vance blocked the first two with astonishing speed, but the strike to his shattered kneecap buckled his leg.
He collapsed to one knee, drawing his secondary firearm with lightning reflexes.
Before he could align the barrel, Claire seized his wrist, torqued the joint with brutal force, and drove her heel into his collarbone.
The gun clattered across the concrete floor, vanishing into the dark space beneath the machinery.
Vance looked up at her, blood dripping from his split lip, but an arrogant smile still lingered on his face.
"You kill me, Claire, and Margaret wins," Vance whispered, wheezing slightly.
"Margaret is spending the rest of her life in an eight-by-ten concrete box," Claire said, her weapon leveled squarely at his forehead.
"You really think she's in that cell?" Vance laughed, a dry, rattling sound that turned Claire’s blood to ice.
Claire’s finger hovered over the trigger. "What did you say?"
"Check the news feeds, little sister," Vance sneered, his eyes gleaming with malice. "The prisoner transfer convoy from Quantico to the federal courthouse was ambushed forty minutes ago."
Claire’s heart skipped a beat, but she didn't allow the muzzle of her weapon to waver even a millimeter.
"You orchestrated the escape," Claire stated, her voice trembling with suppressed rage.
"Margaret paid for the extraction; I merely provided the operational logistics," Vance admitted freely. "We have a mutual understanding."
"You killed her son! You tried to kill her!" Claire yelled, the absurdity of the betrayal overwhelming her reason.
"In our world, blood is currency, Claire," Vance replied calmly. "She needed my network to escape the country, and I needed her to unlock the Swiss biometric reserves."
A sudden explosion rocked the exterior of the warehouse, shaking the concrete floor and sending plumes of dust cascading from the ceiling.
Through the shattered hangar doors, the blinding beam of a searchlight cut through the harbor fog.
A massive military-grade helicopter hovered fifty feet above the pier, rotor blades whipping the black water into a frenzy.
"That's my ride," Vance said calmly, rolling backward toward the pier exit.
"Not today," Claire shouted, lunging forward to apprehend him.
A heavy volley of machine-gun fire tore through the corrugated metal roof, shredding the floor between them in a line of deadly sparks.
Claire was forced to dive behind a concrete pillar as hundreds of rounds obliterated the workshop.
When the dust settled five seconds later, the open doorway stood empty.
May you like
Vance was gone, racing along the pier toward the descending helicopter.
***
