Chapter 6 - The Trap at the Auto Shop"Did you really think an old auto shop registered under your dead brother's secondary tax ID wouldn't pop up on a state registry search?" Kane sneered, stepping through the twisted wreckage of the garage door.
The smoke from the hydraulic ram swirled around his tactical boots. His men fanned out in a tactical wedge, rifles raised, laser sights painting red dots across the dark room.
I immediately stepped in front of Lauren, shielding her behind my frame.
"Kane," Lauren called out from behind me, her voice ringing clear despite her injuries. "Julian is using you. Once he has total control of Titan, he’ll eliminate everyone who knows about the offshore accounts. You're a liability to him."
Kane laughed—a cold, metallic sound. "Julian pays ten million dollars into a Swiss account the moment your body is identified, Lauren. I don't care about your corporate politics. I care about my retirement."
He raised his weapon, aiming directly at my forehead. "Step aside, janitor. You put up a good fight for a guy with a bad knee, but the fairy tale ends here."
"Not yet," I said softly.
I reached behind my back and slammed my thumb down on the remote detonator switch I had rigged twenty minutes earlier using an old car battery and three industrial cans of acetylene torch fuel I’d pulled from Tommy’s workbench.
BOOM!
A blinding flash of orange fire erupted in the front corner of the shop. The pressure wave knocked two of the mercenaries off their feet, filling the enclosed space with thick, black, choking smoke and deafening ringing.
"Go! Out the side door!" I yelled, grabbing Lauren by the arm.
We sprinted—or rather, scrambled—through the narrow side exit into the rainy alleyway. Bullets chewed into the brickwork behind us, showering us with stone dust and mortar fragments.
We hit the street just as an unmarked black sedan screeched to a halt in front of us.
The passenger door swung open.
"Get in! Move!" a woman’s voice barked from inside.
It was Mrs. Wilson.
Sitting in the driver's seat of a pristine 1989 Cadillac, wearing her reading glasses and holding a heavy revolver on her lap, my sixty-five-year-old neighbor looked like she had stepped straight out of an action movie.
"Mrs. Wilson?!" I gasped, shoving Lauren into the backseat and diving in after her.
"I told you I was in the LAPD, Ethan!" she yelled, slamming her foot onto the gas pedal. The heavy V8 engine roared, spinning tires on the wet pavement as we rocketed down the street, leaving Kane’s screaming mercenaries in a cloud of burning rubber and kerosene smoke.
Lauren slumped against the leather seat, breathing heavily, looking at Mrs. Wilson in absolute shock. "Who... who are you people?"
"We're the working class, honey," Mrs. Wilson chuckled, checking her rear-view mirror. "We fix things when rich boys break them. Where's Emma?"
"She's safe at my sister's place in Naperville," Mrs. Wilson reassured me, tapping the steering wheel. "Nobody knows about that house. Now, where are we going? Because I have a feeling we aren't going to the police station."
Lauren wiped a streak of grease from her cheek, her eyes turning into flint. The softness from earlier was gone, replaced by an terrifying, absolute resolve.
"We go to the Drake Hotel," Lauren said, looking at me. "The Gala is in thirty-six hours. We stop playing defense, Ethan. It's time to destroy Julian Vance."
"How?" I asked, bandaging a fresh scrape on my wrist. "He has security, police, and fifty million dollars in private muscle."
Lauren smiled—a cold, beautiful, deadly smile.
May you like
"He has security," she said. "But we have the floor plans, the janitorial passes, and the man who knows how to move through the shadows."
HOOK: As Mrs. Wilson drove us into the night, Lauren pulled up a live broadcast on her phone—only to see Julian Vance standing on stage at an emergency press conference, holding up a bloodstained jacket with my name tag on it, declaring: "Ethan Parker has abducted Lauren Bennett. I am offering a ONE MILLION DOLLAR REWARD for his capture, dead or alive."
