Chapter 4 - HIGHWAY TO OBLIVION
The heavy diesel truck rammed our flank again, the deafening shriek of tearing aluminum echoing inside the windowless van like church bells in a storm. Sparks cascaded across our side windows in an amber curtain.
“Hold on!” Daniel yelled, diving across the floorboards.
He didn't grab me. He grabbed Renee by the scruff of her collar and threw her body across the center aisle, pinning her down with his knee while his right hand racked the slide of an automatic shotgun mounted beneath the bench.
“Julian!” Daniel shouted over the roar of the engines. “Farrell wired the chassis! When his men took over the secondary gate, they slapped a magnetic charge on our rear axle!”
Julian Mercer didn't flinch. He didn't even adjust his wire-rimmed glasses. With agonizing calm, he pulled a compact digital transceiver from his waistcoat pocket, thumbed a toggle switch, and held it to his lips.
“Raven Three,” Julian said into the mic, his tone as casual as an order for dry martini. “Clear the lane.”
Farrell’s armored sedan surged forward, attempting to pin our front bumper against the concrete divider. Through the tinted glass, Edward’s eyes were bloodshot, manic. The refined, charming billionaire who had hosted charity galas in Dallas was gone; in his place was the rabid dog who had stripped my family of its legacy. He held the detonator high, his thumb twitching over the plastic guard.
Then the night sky split open.
A deafening roar—not of an engine, but of a heavy caliber anti-materiel rifle—shook the highway.
From an overpass three hundred yards ahead, a muzzle flash blossomed in the dark. A split second later, the engine block of the heavy-duty pickup truck riding our bumper simply disintegrated. The half-inch armor plate of the truck’s hood buckled upward; steam, oil, and shrapnel erupted in a violent fireball as the truck’s front axle snapped like a dry twig. The pickup violently flipped end-over-end, hurtling across three lanes of traffic before crashing into the retaining wall in a magnificent plume of burning diesel.
The shockwave rocked our van sideways, but our driver kept the wheels straight, rubber burning against asphalt as we shot through the gap.
Edward’s sedan swerved wildly to avoid the tumbling wreckage of his escort vehicle. The sudden evasive maneuver caused his front tire to blow against the jagged debris of the truck’s shattered frame. The black sedan spun a full 180 degrees, tires screaming, before slamming hard into the bridge abutment.
The impact jammed Edward’s door against the concrete. Through the rear window, I saw him kicking furiously at the windshield, his face bloody, the detonator tumbling from his grasp onto the asphalt.
We didn't stop.
Our van surged down the off-ramp, cutting its headlights as we plunged into the industrial maze of the old Trinity River district.
“Valerie,” Julian said, reaching over to press a clean cotton pad against my temple where blood had begun trickling into my eye. “Stay with me. Focus on my voice.”
“Andrew…” I gasped, my vision tunneling rapidly into a pinhole of gray light. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. “The shooter on the overpass… was that him?”
“Your brother does not miss,” Julian said simply.
The van screeched to a halt inside a cavernous, dimly lit warehouse. The roll-up corrugated door slammed down behind us with the heavy finality of a tomb. Instantly, the van’s rear doors were ripped open from the outside.
Four men and two women in surgical scrubs rushed forward, wheeling a mobile gurney directly to the bumper.
“Blood pressure eighty over forty and dropping!” a female voice shouted. “Abdominal distension in the lower left quadrant. Spleen is ruptured! Get her onto the board—one, two, three, lift!”
The agony of being shifted onto the hard plastic board tore a scream from my throat that died as a bloody cough. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights of the makeshift surgical bay swept past in a blinding blur. Faces hovered over me—surgeons in sterile masks, gloved hands cutting away my ruined clothes, the sharp bite of IV needles puncturing both my arms simultaneously.
“Hold her down!” someone barked. “Pre-oxygenate! Push twenty of etomidate, one hundred of sux!”
Through the chaotic flurry of medical equipment and shouted vitals, a figure stepped into my narrowing field of view.
He wasn't wearing scrubs. He was wearing a tactical jacket smelling of burnt cordite and rain. A dark baseball cap was pulled low over his forehead, but it couldn't hide the scar running from his hairline down through his left eyebrow to the cheekbone. The jaw was sharper than I remembered, rebuilt with titanium plates and skin grafts, but the eyes—deep, fierce, unwavering green—were the eyes of my brother.
“Andrew,” I tried to say, but the plastic oxygen mask was already strapped tight over my mouth and nose.
He leaned down. His gloved hand, calloused and trembling slightly, closed around mine. He squeezed it so hard the bones ached.
“I’m here, Val,” Andrew whispered, his voice rough, gravelly from the fire that had stolen our parents. “I’m here. You survived the cellar. Now survive the table. I need you to help me burn them down.”
A cold, heavy darkness rushed into my veins from the IV line. The bright surgical lights flickered and spun, dissolving into the abyss of anesthesia. My last thought, before the void swallowed me whole, wasn't about Edward, or Renee, or the company we had lost.
May you like
It was the realization that the Salazar family hadn't been destroyed.
We had just been waiting in the dark.
