Chapter 4 - The Predator’s Price
Vance didn't round the corner shooting blindly; he threw a heavy wooden nightstand through the doorway first. It smashed into the hallway wall with a deafening crack, designed to draw my fire and drain my magazine.
I held my trigger finger steady along the frame of the Glock.
A split-second behind the flying nightstand came Vance. He moved with terrifying momentum, low and violent. The suppressed barrel of his weapon swept toward the linen closet where he expected me to be.
Instead, I was prone on the floorboards directly at his feet.
I fired two rounds upward into his center mass.
*BANG. BANG.*
The bullets struck his chest, but he was wearing concealed Level III ceramic plates. The impacts slammed him backward half a step, knocking the wind from his lungs, but they didn't penetrate.
Before I could adjust my aim toward his pelvic cradle or his throat, Vance kicked out with a steel-toed combat boot.
The blow caught me across the side of my face. White light exploded behind my eyes. The force tore the Glock from my grip, sending it skittering down the polished stairs.
My vision swam with gray static, but muscle memory took over. I scrambled forward, driving my shoulder directly into his knee joint to collapse his base.
Vance roared in pain as his leg buckled beneath him. We crashed together onto the hallway floor, rolling through broken glass and splinters of wood. His submachine gun was trapped between our bodies, the sling wrapping tight around my forearm. I drove my elbow into his jaw—once, twice—feeling cartilage crunch beneath the strike.
Vance snarled, bucking his hips with immense core strength, reversing the position and pinning me against the floorboards. His massive hands clamped around my throat, thumbs driving ruthlessly into my windpipe.
"You should have stayed in the desert, boy," he growled, spit flying from his bloodied mouth. "Sophia is going to die tonight. And you're going to die right here in your own blood."
Oxygen vanished. My vision began tunneling, dark edges creeping into the room. His grip was an iron vise, crushing my trachea.
I didn't try to pry his fingers off; you can't break a grip that strong from the wrists.
Instead, I reached blindly to my right hip. My fingers found the four-inch Ka-Bar combat folder clipped inside my belt. My thumb flicked the thumb-stud. The blade snapped open with a sharp, mechanical click.
With everything left in my failing body, I drove the blade up into Vance’s left armpit—the unarmored gap where the ceramic plate met the shoulder socket.
The steel sank deep.
Vance let out an agonized, guttural scream. His grip on my throat vanished instantly as his left arm went dead, the nerve cluster severed. Blood, dark and arterial, spurted across my chest.
He scrambled backward, clutching his armpit, breathing in ragged, choked gasps. He stared at me with unbridled fury and sudden, creeping shock. He had expected an emotional, broken widower. He hadn't expected someone willing to carve him like an animal.
I rolled onto my knees, coughing violently, sucking air into my bruised trachea, the bloody knife gripped in a reverse icepick hold.
"Where is the ledger, Vance?" I rasped, stepping toward him.
Vance fell back against the wall, leaving a wide smear of red against the white wallpaper. He reached for his sidearm with his functioning right hand, but I closed the distance instantly, kicking his right wrist with the heel of my boot. The pistol clattered down the hallway.
I pressed the tip of the combat knife against the soft flesh beneath his chin, right above the Adam's apple, pinning his head against the wall.
"Talk," I whispered. "Or I open your throat and let you choke on your own blood on my carpet."
Vance smiled through a mask of blood, his teeth stained crimson.
"You're too late, soldier," he coughed. "I never needed the drive from this house."
"What are you talking about?"
"The hospital," Vance hissed, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. "The backup drive was never here. Sophia kept the decryption key on her person. Inside the locket she wears under her surgical bandages."
My heart stopped beating.
*The ICU.*
May you like
"I didn't come here to find the ledger," Vance whispered, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. "I came here to draw you away from Saint Matthew's. Richard's men are already at the hospital, Ethan. While you were playing commando with me... they pulled the plug."
***
