Chapter 18 - The Choice
“Back off!” the gunman shouted.
Nathan froze.
Pike’s men spread out among the graves.
FBI vehicles crashed through the cemetery gates.
Agent Torres shouted through a loudspeaker.
“Drop your weapons!”
The man holding Claire tightened his arm.
Pike grabbed one of the waterproof cases.
“If I go down, half this city goes with me.”
Thomas said, “That is the idea.”
Pike laughed.
Nathan kept his eyes on Claire.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“Remember the kitchen?” he asked.
Claire understood.
Their first apartment had been tiny. Nicholas had taught her how to escape a rear choke hold after a break-in two blocks away.
Drop weight. Turn chin. Attack grip. Move.
Claire let her knees collapse.
The gunman’s balance broke.
She twisted hard, slammed her elbow backward, and tore free.
Nathan fired.
The gunman’s weapon flew from his hand.
Agents surged forward.
Pike ran.
Marcus appeared from behind a stone monument and tackled him.
Both men crashed into the mud.
Claire stared.
“What are you doing here?”
Marcus grunted while fighting Pike. “Family reunion!”
Pike reached for a backup gun.
Thomas kicked it away.
Torres’s agents pinned Pike face-down.
It was over in less than a minute.
Then Torres opened the case Pike had grabbed.
Empty.
Everyone looked at Thomas.
He smiled faintly.
“Decoy.”
Nathan lifted the real archive from beneath his coat.
Claire laughed for the first time in six months.
Not because anything was funny.
Because she had survived long enough to feel something other than grief.
Torres began cataloging the evidence.
Then an agent approached her, pale.
“Ma’am, we have a problem.”
Torres looked up.
“What?”
“The federal evidence server was breached ten minutes ago.”
Nathan’s smile disappeared.
The agent continued.
May you like
“Someone uploaded a kill list.”
Claire’s name was first.
