Chapter 6 - The Iron Flight
The Victorian house offered no defensive perimeter. Its timber walls were dry as kindling, its windows wide and brittle.
"Fire escape," Frank commanded, tossing a heavy knit cap to Katherine and racking the slide of his Sig Sauer. "Leads to the service alley behind the brewery. We have two minutes before they seal the block."
Julian reached down, unclipping the dog’s leather leash from the radiator post. "Bruno, heel." The dog rose, its ears pinned back, sensing the shift in the air with ancient, predatory awareness.
They moved out through the narrow sash window onto the rusted iron fire escape just as the sound of heavy tires crunched over wet gravel in the alley below.
A sharp, muffled crack shattered the third-floor glass above their heads, showering them with crystalline fragments. A suppressed rifle shot.
"Down!" Julian hissed, throwing his body over Katherine as Frank returned fire through the iron grating, the sharp, concussive reports of his nine-millimeter barking three times into the darkness below.
A man in a dark tactical vest stumbled backward in the alley, dropping a shortened automatic shotgun into the wet weeds.
"Run!" Frank shouted, his shoulder slamming into the rusted safety ladder, dropping it six feet to the asphalt with a metallic clatter.
Julian guided Katherine down the rungs, his boots hitting the wet pavement an instant later. Bruno leapt from the second-story platform without hesitation, his heavy paws landing in the gravel with a muted thud, teeth bared in a silent snarl toward the mouth of the alley.
Two more figures rounded the brick corner of the brewery, weapons raised.
"Bruno! Hold!" Julian roared, pointing toward the lead shooter.
The ninety-pound dog lunged through the drizzle like a black projectile. The lead gunman had half a second to widen his eyes before ninety pounds of muscle and iron jaw crashed into his chest, slamming him against the brick wall with a sickening crunch of broken ribs. The second man fired wildly into the gravel, but Frank was already there—two rapid, disciplined rounds to the center of mass that dropped the assailant onto his face.
"Julian, the car is blocked at the intersection," Frank panted, reloading his magazine with practiced, mechanical speed. "The rail yard. Track two has a freight staging for Newburgh."
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They sprinted through the rain, Katherine’s hand locked within Julian’s. For two months, he had believed those fingers were dust beneath granite; now, the warmth of her blood burning through his skin gave him the speed of an enraged animal.
They ducked beneath the rusted iron turnstile of the Beacon industrial siding, slipping between two lines of motionless grain cars just as the high beams of two more pursuit vehicles raked across the tracks.
