Chapter 6 - THE WATERFRONT WARI dropped the empty magazine, slammed a fresh one home with the heel of my palm, and vaulted out from behind the crate, laying down a furious wall of fire toward the end of the pier.
The two remaining operators ducked behind their cover, startled by the aggressive counter-attack. It was all the window I needed. I dove backward off the edge of the dock, splashing heavily into the icy Atlantic water just as a burst of bullets chewed through the air where my head had been a second earlier.
"Grab my hand!" Marcus roared, leaning over the gunwale of the Zodiac as it surged forward from the slip.
I broke the surface, gasping for air as the freezing seawater locked my lungs. I reached up with my left hand, catching Marcus’s thick forearm. With a tremendous heave, he hauled me bodily over the rubber pontoon and into the bottom of the boat.
"Go, Marcus, go!" I sputtered, wiping saltwater from my eyes.
Marcus slammed the throttle forward. The Zodiac leaped out of the boat house like a startled animal, its twin engines screaming as it hit the open chop of the harbor, throwing sheets of white spray into the morning air.
Behind us, on the end of the pier, a figure stepped out from the shadows of the concrete pilings.
Even through the distance, the mist, and the blowing rain, I recognized him.
Victor Thorne.
He wasn't holding a rifle. He was holding a cell phone to his ear, his face carved into a mask of cold, merciless fury as he watched us skip across the gray waves toward the open sea. He didn't need to shoot us anymore. Because as I looked down at my phone, which was buzzing violently in my wet coat pocket, I realized we had only escaped the first circle of hell.
My phone screen flashed with an incoming encrypted text message from my father’s head lawyer:
The federal grand jury just unsealed the indictments. All Calder assets have been frozen by the DOJ. And a warrant has been issued for your arrest—for the murder of Vincent Calder.
May you like
I stared at the screen as the cold realization settled deep into my bones.
Victor Thorne hadn't just sent hitmen to kill Lily. He had framed me for my father’s murder, seized the control codes to the entire syndicate, and left us stranded in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to run and every federal agency in the country hunting our blood.
