Chapter 2 - THE MATTE-BLACK CONVOYThe transition from the refined luxury of the Gilded Spoon to the cold, tactical interior of the black SUV happened in less than forty seconds.
Davis held Maya in one arm and grabbed my wrist with his free hand, pulling me through the restaurant’s rear exit before I could even take off my stained white apron. Behind us, the high-end patrons of Michigan Avenue were left in utter chaos as three security guards in dark suits closed the velvet ropes and locked the doors behind us.
“In. Now,” Davis commanded, shoving open the door of a heavy, matte-black armored vehicle parked in the alleyway.
I threw myself into the leather back seat. Maya scrambled in right after me, burying her face directly into my side. Her small hands clutched the fabric of my clothes with terrifying strength. I wrapped an arm around her automatically, shielding her body with mine as Davis slammed the door shut and slid into the front passenger seat.
The driver floored the accelerator.
The SUV lurched forward, tires screaming against the damp alley asphalt. We burst out onto the main street just as two black sedans with blacked-out windows tore around the corner, clipping the bumper of a passing yellow cab.
“They’re on us, Mr. Vance,” the driver said, his eyes glued to the side mirrors.
I froze. Vance?
“Did you just call him Vance?” I blurted out, my chest heaving as I looked at the back of Davis’s head. “I thought you said you bought the restaurant from Vance!”
Davis—or whoever he was—didn't look back. He pulled a heavy dark handgun from a holster under his jacket and checked the chamber with a sickening, mechanical clack.
“My name is Gabriel Vance,” he said coldly. “The man who owned the Gilded Spoon was my uncle, Richard. And he didn't sell me his debt. He set a trap.”
My head spun. “A trap? What kind of trap?”
“A lure,” Gabriel replied, staring out the side window as a black sedan pulled parallel to our vehicle. “He leaked my daughter’s location to the Sokolov Syndicate. He knew I’d come out of hiding to bring her lunch at a public place.”
Brrrrrrt.
A hail of high-caliber bullets shattered the reinforced side glass of our vehicle. The inner layer of bulletproof polymer held, but it crazed into a spiderweb of opaque white lines. Maya let out a silent, terrifying gasp, her entire body rigid against me.
“Hold on!” the driver yelled, swinging the heavy steering wheel hard to the right.
The three-ton armored SUV slammed into the side of the attackers’ sedan, forcing it up onto the sidewalk, where it crashed into a fire hydrant, sending a fountain of white water forty feet into the air.
“They aren't trying to kill you, Gabriel!” I yelled over the engine roar, holding Maya closer. “They’re trying to take her!”
Gabriel glanced back at me through the rearview mirror. His eyes were icy, but there was a flicker of genuine shock in them. “How do you know that?”
“Because if they wanted to kill us, they would have rammed us or used explosives!” I spat out, the survival instincts from growing up on the South Side kicking in through the shock. “They’re driving sideways to pin us! They want her alive!”
Gabriel didn't answer. He reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a second firearm, and tossed it into the back seat. It landed on the leather cushion right next to my leg.
“Can you use it?” he asked.
I stared at the cold steel weapon. My father had been a Chicago beat cop before he died. He had taken me to the range every weekend from the age of twelve until the day he was buried.
“I know how to turn the safety off,” I said, picking up the gun with trembling hands. “Where are we going?”
“Safehouse off 95th,” Gabriel said. “We have five miles of highway before we reach the perimeter.”
“We won’t make it to 95th,” the driver grunted, pointing to the digital dashboard. “Engine temp is spiking. They hit our radiator in the alley.”
Smoke began to pour from under the hood. The SUV began to lose speed, the engine coughing violently as we approached the entrance to the lower Wacker Drive tunnel—a dark, claustrophobic subterranean network of roads underneath Chicago.
“Get us into the lower level,” Gabriel ordered. “We foot-it from there.”
The driver swerved down the ramp into the dim, yellow-lit bowels of lower Wacker. The moment our tires touched the concrete basement level, the SUV’s engine gave a final, metallic scream and died completely.
The vehicle coasted to a stop in the shadows beneath an overpass.
Silence descended, heavy and thick.
Gabriel opened his door. “Out. Now. Move!”
I opened my door, grabbing Maya by the waist and pulling her with me. We hit the pavement running. The air down here smelled of exhaust, stagnant water, and grease.
Behind us, the headlights of three dark sedans illuminated the mouth of the tunnel.
Gabriel pulled a small controller from his belt, turned toward our dead SUV, and pressed a red button.
“Cover your eyes!” he barked.
He threw his arm over Maya and me just as our vehicle detonated in a blinding wall of orange fire and deafening sound, collapsing the lower ramp entrance and sealing the tunnel behind us in a massive shower of concrete and twisted metal.
The blast wave threw us forward onto the asphalt.
I coughed through the dust, my elbows scraped bleeding, my heart hammering against my ribs. I looked up.
Gabriel was standing over us, his gun raised, staring into the dark darkness of the lower tunnel ahead.
“They knew we were coming down here,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. “There’s a traitor inside my inner circle.”
May you like
He turned and looked directly at me.
“And you, Cassidy... you just walked into a war that’s been going on for twenty years.”
