Chapter 6 - THE RED DOT ON THE GLASSTime seemed to slow down to a crawl.
The red laser dot danced across the lapel of Lyra’s blazer, burning a bright, crimson warning against the dark fabric. Down on the street below, the evening traffic hummed along mindlessly, completely unaware of the lethal sniper rifle trained on the 80th floor of Vance Tower.
“Get down!” her head of security roared, lunging across the room and tackling Lyra to the carpet just as a deafening CRACK shattered the thick, bullet-resistant glass pane.
Shards of reinforced glass rained down like diamonds, glittering under the penthouse lights. Alarms immediately began to wail throughout the building, strobes flashing red and white.
Lyra rolled to her feet, her adrenaline surging, her eyes burning with pure, unadulterated fury. She didn't look scared. She looked like a predator that had just been cornered.
“Trace that origin!” Lyra ordered, her voice cutting through the blaring alarms with icy precision.
“Rooftop of the Apex Financial building, sector four,” her security chief shouted into his comm-link, drawing his sidearm. “Moving intervention teams now!”
Lyra walked calmly back to her desk, ignoring the shattered glass crunching under her heels. She picked up her landline phone—the secure, encrypted line connected directly to the federal task force leading the corporate corruption investigation.
“Get me Director Vance,” she commanded coldly.
Within seconds, the director’s gruff voice answered. “Ms. Vance? We heard the shots. Are you—?”
“Arthur Sterling just tried to assassinate me,” Lyra interrupted, her voice steady and lethal. “His sniper is on the Apex building roof right now. If your men don't capture him alive within five minutes, I’m going to unleash every single encrypted file on the Sterling family’s tax evasion and human trafficking rings to every news outlet on the planet.”
“Understood. Moving in,” the director replied, the line going dead.
May you like
Lyra hung up the phone, turned toward the broken window, and stared out into the neon-lit horizon where the rival Sterling skyscraper loomed in the distance.
“You think a bullet can stop me, Arthur?” she whispered to the empty air. “You just started a war you can never win.”
