Chapter 19 - The Door That Wouldn't Open
Nico grabbed the fire extinguisher from its bracket and sprayed the table. Gideon hurled the burning flare toward a pile of packing material and sprinted for the rear exit.
"Gideon!" Nico shouted.
He followed far enough to see his brother disappear behind a parked truck. Then smoke thickened, turning the office windows black.
Outside, officers moved in. Fire crews were already approaching the dock. Nico staggered toward the front door, coughing, and found that a warped steel frame had jammed it shut.
For one terrible moment he was ten years old again, trapped in a room while his father told him that asking for help was weakness.
He slammed his palm against the glass.
"I'm inside!"
Someone on the other side struck the lower pane. A firefighter appeared through the smoke, mask shining under emergency lights.
"Get down!" she ordered.
The glass broke. Nico crawled through and collapsed on the concrete, sucking cold air into his lungs.
Gideon made it less than two blocks. Police stopped his truck at the gate and took him into custody. Officers recovered his phone, the false transfer documents, and keys to three storage sites. A separate team secured the remaining workers at those locations.
At the hospital, Nico sat with an oxygen tube beneath his nose when Simone arrived.
"Your brother is in custody," she told him. "We've got your recording. And Mara's documents are enough to corroborate a lot of it."
"The ledgers?"
"Some burned. Some didn't. We had copies from the warrants before the meeting."
Nico let out a breath. "Good."
"I'm still going to ask you about your own approvals."
"I know."
She lowered herself into the chair beside him. "For what it's worth, you made the right call tonight."
"That doesn't erase the others."
"No," Simone said. "It doesn't."
Across the hall, Mara woke from a short, exhausted sleep. Sophie lay curled beside her, holding Patch. The nurse had brought them a fresh blue blanket.
Mara reached for her daughter's hand.
May you like
Sophie opened her eyes and asked the question that made Mara's heart stop.
"Mommy, when we go home, will the bad men still know where we live?"
