CHAPTER 2 — The Drawing That Changed Everything
The sniper never fired.
Instead...
He smiled.
Hidden behind the window of an abandoned warehouse nearly three hundred yards away, a man lowered his binoculars.
"Interesting," he murmured.
"The kid noticed."
He calmly packed away his equipment before disappearing into the darkness.
Across the street, Chase's instincts screamed.
"We're still being watched."
His men swept rooftops.
Nothing.
Empty.
Too empty.
Back at Dominic's Restaurant, police evacuated the area while bomb technicians safely dismantled all four devices.
Each bomb had been built differently.
Professional.
Untraceable.
"This wasn't intimidation," Bishop said quietly.
"It was extermination."
Someone wanted Chase Holloway erased forever.
The bomb squad discovered another disturbing detail.
Each explosive contained tiny steel bearings designed to become deadly shrapnel.
The blast radius stretched nearly one hundred feet.
Children...
Waiters...
Tourists...
Nobody nearby would have survived.
Meanwhile Gavin sat wrapped in a blanket inside an ambulance.
His hands still trembled.
A female paramedic smiled gently.
"You were very brave."
"I wasn't brave."
He stared at the ground.
"I almost ran away."
Those words reached Chase.
He walked over himself.
"You still came."
Gavin nodded.
"My mom always says..."
"...doing the right thing while scared is what courage actually is."
For the first time in years...
Chase smiled.
A genuine one.
Then Bishop interrupted.
"We found something."
Inside Gavin's sketchbook.
Hidden between ordinary school drawings.
Was another sketch.
One Gavin insisted he had never drawn.
The page showed Chase standing beside the fountain.
Behind him...
A shadowy figure held a remote detonator.
And written across the bottom...
In childish handwriting...
RUN.
Everyone froze.
"Gavin..."
"When did you draw this?"
"I didn't."
"You've got to believe me."
"I never saw that page before."
Before anyone could respond—
May you like
A gunshot echoed across the river.
The ambulance window exploded.
