Chapter 4 - SHADOWS OF THE BOARDROOM
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT: When Corporate Greed Drags a Child Into the Crosshairs!
Catherine reached into her coat pocket and grabbed her heavy metal flashlight.
She didn't turn it on. Instead, she wrapped her leather glove tightly around the handle, took aim at a cluster of dry, dead branches hanging over a rocky outcrop on the opposite side of the ravine—away from James Hartley—and threw it with all her might.
The heavy flashlight crashed through the deadwood with a loud, clattering racket, sending a cascade of loose ice and rocks tumbling down the far slope.
“Movement! Over there!” the first gunman yelled, immediately pivoting his rifle toward the sound.
“Go, go!” the second one barked.
Both mercenaries scrambled across the icy creek bed, their attention entirely diverted by the decoy.
Catherine didn't waste a second. She slid down the steep, snowy bank of the ravine, using her hands to break her descent, scraping her palms against buried rocks. She landed hard in the snow just a few feet from James Hartley.
James gasped, instinctively raising a blood-stained, trembling hand holding a small pocketknife. “Who... who are you?” he rasped, his teeth chattering violently. His face was slick with sweat despite the freezing cold.
“I have Melody,” Catherine whispered urgently, crawling to his side. “She’s safe. I hid her near the trail. I called 911, but we don't have time. We have to move now.”
James’s eyes widened at the mention of his daughter. The despair in his eyes replaced by a sudden, fierce spark of hope. “Melody... she’s alive? Thank God. Thank God.” He tried to stand, but a agonized groan escaped his lips as his shattered right leg collapsed under him.
“Easy,” Catherine whispered, catching him. She threw his arm over her shoulder. “You have to lean on me. We have to get back up this bank before they realize the noise was a trick.”
“You don't understand,” James wheezed, his breath smelling of copper and pain. “They won't stop. It’s my brother. Marcus. He... he found out I was going to the SEC. Our gene therapy... it has a ninety percent mortality rate in animal trials. Marcus forged the data to get FDA approval. He’s about to launch a IPO worth five billion dollars. He paid these men to kill me and make it look like an accident. He wants Melody to ensure my estate passes to him.”
Catherine froze.
Marcus Hartley.
A sick, cold dread settled deep in her stomach.
Walsh Consulting’s biggest, most lucrative client—the one she had spent the last six months advising on a massive public merger—was Hartley BioTech. The very contract she had signed today at the mountain resort was with Marcus Hartley.
She hadn't just helped a corporation. She had paved the way for a murderer to secure the funds to hire the killers currently stalking them.
“Catherine Walsh,” James muttered, looking at her face in the dim light. “I saw your picture on the corporate prospectus. You’re... you’re Marcus’s lead consultant.”
“I didn't know,” Catherine said, her voice shaking with a mixture of rage and horror. “I swear to you, James, I didn't know. But I’m going to get you out of here. And we are going to burn his empire to the ground.”
From across the ravine, a harsh voice shattered the wind.
May you like
“It’s a decoy! There’s nothing here! Check the creek bed again!”
They were coming back.
