Chapter 5 - The ICU ProtocolThe world went completely silent.
Not the silence of peace, but the deafening, vacuum-packed quiet that precedes an explosion.
Julian had just signed her death warrant. The woman who had sat outside my office door for six years, who had memorized my schedule, who had taken a nine-millimeter round through her right shoulder without screaming, was currently lying in a hospital bed while a hired killer finished the job.
I didn't reach for the pen.
Instead, my right hand dropped casually to my side, sliding past my belt line.
"You're making a mistake, Uncle," I said, my voice dropping into a steady, hypnotic drone that made Marcus’s guards shift uneasily on their feet.
"The only mistake was letting you survive your father's accident," Julian said, picking up his glass again. "Marcus, finish him."
Marcus didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, raising the butt of his rifle to smash it across my skull.
That was the exact second I moved.
Instead of drawing my Sig Sauer, I whipped my left hand up, grabbing the heavy crystal decanter of scotch sitting on Julian’s desk and hurling it directly into Marcus’s face. The crystal shattered against his cheekbone, sending amber liquid and jagged shards flying across the floor as Marcus stumbled backward with a roar of pain.
The two guards flanking him raised their rifles, but I had already dropped into a low crouch, drawing my sidearm and firing twice through the leather of my jacket.
Crack. Crack.
Both rounds caught the lead guard dead in the center of his tactical vest, dropping him instantly. The second guard tried to swing his barrel toward my chest, but I lunged forward, grabbing the barrel of his assault rifle and forcing it upward just as it discharged, blowing a hole straight through the sixty-fourth-floor ceiling tiles.
Before he could recover, I drove the heavy steel butt of my pistol into his temple. He collapsed like a sack of wet cement.
Julian leaped out of his chair, his face white with terror, his hand fumbling inside his cashmere sweater for a pocket pistol.
"You arrogant little bastard—" he started.
I didn't shoot him. I grabbed him by the collar of his expensive sweater, hauled him across the mahogany desk, and slammed him against the floor-to-ceiling glass window. The reinforced double-pane glass bowed outward under the impact, sixty-four stories above the street.
The view of Manhattan spun wildly in Julian’s terrified eyes.
"Where is the nurse?" I snarled, pressing the cold muzzle of my pistol directly against the hollow of his throat. "Give me the name, Julian. Now."
"V-Vance!" he choked out, his fingers clawing desperately at my wrists. "Agent Vance’s other asset... Nurse Miller. She’s on the fourth-floor ICU rotation at St. Catherine’s!"
I didn't waste another breath. I slammed the butt of my gun against the side of Julian’s head, and he dropped unconscious onto the carpet beside the scattered legal papers.
I turned and sprinted toward the private elevator, hitting the emergency descent button with the palm of my hand while dialing Marcus’s secure radio frequency on my burner phone.
"Marcus," I barked as the elevator plummeted downward at terminal velocity.
A heavy, groaning cough came through the speaker. "Go to hell, boss..."
"Listen to me very carefully," I said, my voice trembling with a rage I had never allowed myself to feel before. "If Claire dies in that hospital, I won't just hand you over to the feds. I’m going to hunt down every single safehouse, bank account, and associate your family has left on this continent and burn them to ash. Call the hospital right now. Tell Miller to stand down."
The line was silent for three seconds. Then came a wet, broken laugh.
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"It’s... it’s already too late, Dominic. Miller was scheduled to administer the flush at 5:00 AM. That was three minutes ago."
The elevator chimed, the doors flew open into the underground garage, and I threw myself into the driver’s seat of the SUV, slamming my foot down on the gas so hard the tires shrieked against the concrete.
