Chapter 11 - The Tunnels Beneath the City
They hit the basement floor covered in white drywall dust and grit. Luca and Matteo were already at the open storm-drain hatch, covering their escape with flashlights.
“Move, move!” Matteo yelled.
They dropped down into the dark, echoing brick storm tunnels beneath the streets of Chicago. The cold stench of stagnant water and rust hit them immediately. Above them, the sirens of responding police cruisers and fire engines echoed through the manhole covers, muffled by ten feet of concrete.
Enzo pulled Harper against the tunnel wall, shining a small penlight over her face. “You hurt?”
“Just bruised,” Harper gasped, wiping blood from a shallow cut on her forehead. She looked up at him in the dim light. “Did we get him? Did the roof take him out?”
“No,” Enzo said grimly. “I saw him roll clear before the main beam came down. He’s alive. But his entire security force is wiped out, and the feds will be crawling all over that wreckage in ten minutes.”
“Which means he has only one place left to go,” Luca said, leaning heavily against the curved brick wall. “The private airstrip at Gary, Indiana. He keeps a Gulfstream fueled twenty-four hours a day for emergency extractions.”
“We cut him off,” Enzo said, checking the remaining ammo in his mags.
“Enzo, you don't understand,” Harper said, catching her breath. “Preston won't leave the country without the master key for the offshore accounts. The USB drive you have? It’s encrypted with a two-part biometric code. Half of it is his thumbprint… and the other half is mine.”
Enzo stared at her in shock. “He needs your hand to unlock the money.”
“He needs my pulse,” Harper corrected, her voice dead serious. “If I’m dead, the accounts freeze permanently. That’s why he didn't shoot me on sight in the lobby. He needs me alive at that airstrip.”
Enzo’s eyes flashed with a lethal, icy calm.
“Then we give him what he wants,” Enzo said. “We deliver you to the plane.”
Matteo cocked an eyebrow. “Boss, that’s suicide. He’ll have his remaining inner circle waiting at the hangar.”
“No,” Enzo said, turning to look directly at Harper. “It’s not suicide. It’s an execution. Harper, are you ready to finish this?”
May you like
Harper looked down at her bruised hands, then looked up into the eyes of the man who had started the night as her captor and ended it as her weapon.
“Get me to that hangar,” she said.
