Chapter 14 - The Shot
The gunshot exploded through the concrete floor.
Daniel hit me from the side and drove me behind a column.
A second shot cracked overhead.
Then Ryan shouted, “Stop!”
Peter shouted something back.
Feet scraped across wet concrete.
I pressed one hand against Daniel’s chest.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
The tracker icon moved on my phone.
Peter was heading toward the east stairwell.
Police sirens rose in the distance.
Ryan appeared from the darkness.
Daniel lunged at him.
Ryan dropped the gun and raised both hands.
“I fired at Peter.”
“Why?”
“He had another gun.”
As if to prove it, a shot slammed into the column beside us.
Concrete dust burst across my face.
We dropped.
Ryan crawled toward the weapon he had discarded.
“No,” I said.
He ignored me.
Then a voice boomed from outside.
“Police! Drop all weapons!”
Peter ran.
The tracker moved upward, then stopped.
Rachel’s voice in my ear: “Third floor.”
Officers flooded the ground level.
Ryan flattened himself on the floor and slid the gun away.
Daniel raised both hands.
I did the same.
Within minutes, police had us separated.
Peter did not surrender.
He barricaded himself in an equipment room on the third floor and remained there for forty-three minutes.
When he finally came out, the folder was gone.
So was the tracking chip.
But the microtext remained on the approval sheet he had stuffed inside his coat.
INVALID.
The detective held it up under the floodlights.
Peter looked at me and smiled.
“You think this ends because you caught me in a building?”
“No,” I said. “I think it starts because now people can subpoena you.”
His smile disappeared.
Ryan was arrested for fraud, weapons violations, and his part in the Northlight scheme. Peter was arrested on separate charges related to unlawful entry, coercion, and the confrontation at Harbor Point while investigators built the financial case.
At 2:00 a.m., Daniel and I sat in plastic chairs at the police station.
He had a cut above one eyebrow.
I had concrete dust in my hair.
Neither of us looked married.
“Are you leaving me?” he asked.
I stared at the vending machine.
“Tonight?”
“In general.”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded as if he had expected worse.
“My answer might change every hour.”
“That’s fair.”
“No, Daniel. Fair would have been telling me why you approached me before you proposed.”
“I know.”
“And recusing me from the transaction yourself once we got serious.”
“I know.”
“And not asking me to apologize because your adult brother wanted potatoes served to him.”
His mouth twisted painfully.
“I know.”
For a few seconds, I almost smiled.
Then my phone rang.
Lila.
“The committee met without you,” she said.
“At two in the morning?”
“Emergency call. We’re withdrawing the Caldwell financing.”
Daniel heard.
His face went still.
Lila continued, “Compliance also found a second financing application submitted last month to another investment group.”
“By Caldwell?”
“Yes. Using substantially the same materials.”
“Who signed it?”
She paused.
“You did.”
I closed my eyes.
Another forged signature.
“Which investment group?”
“Bracken Capital’s parent fund.”
I opened my eyes.
“What parent fund?”
Lila read the name.
I knew it.
Everyone in restructuring did.
May you like
A giant distressed-debt fund called Vantage Meridian.
The firm that employed my boss.
