Chapter 4 - The Sound of Thunder
The power died thirty seconds later.
The estate plunged into pitch blackness as the backup generators sputtered and failed—sabotaged from the inside. Outside, the howl of the winter wind was punctuated by the sharp, muffled crack-crack-crack of suppressed gunfire near the front gates.
I didn't panic. The dark was an old friend.
I wheeled myself smoothly away from the desk, pulling my Kimber 1911 from my shoulder holster. In the dark, my wheelchair was quiet, the rubber tires gliding over the heavy oriental rugs without a sound. I knew every inch of this room, every turn of the corridors, every blind spot in the architecture.
A shadow crossed the doorway.
The silhouette was large, carrying a short-barreled submachine gun, moving with trained tactical precision. He paused, raising his weapon to sweep the study.
I rolled out from the shadow of the tall bookcase right behind him.
Prt. Prt.
Two rounds from my suppressed pistol took him in the back of the neck and the base of the skull. He dropped like a sack of wet cement without making a sound.
I grabbed his tactical vest, pulled a fresh magazine from his belt, and checked his face with the small penlight attached to my watch. It was Russo. Salvatore’s chief button-man.
"Clear," I called out quietly toward the desk.
Emma let out a small, muffled gasp from behind the wood, but she didn't scream. She was tougher than I gave her credit for.
Footsteps hurried down the hall—heavy, fast, uncoordinated.
"Danny!" Luke’s voice called out from the darkness. "Danny, where are you?!"
"In the study!" I answered. "Report!"
Luke burst through the doorway, his gun drawn, a red smear of blood across his left cheek. "We got three of them at the gate. One came through the kitchen. The security grid was fried from the primary junction box in the basement."
"It was Marcus," I said coldly, referring to my head of house security. "He’s the only one with access to the basement junction box."
Luke cursed under his breath. "I'll kill the bastard."
"No," I replied, rolling my chair toward the window where the storm raged outside. "Bring him to me alive. I want Salvatore to hear his voice over the speakerphone before I break his neck."
Luke looked at Russo’s corpse on the floor, then at me sitting in the dark with a smoking gun in my lap, the phantom pain in my legs completely forgotten under the adrenaline rush of combat.
For the first time in two years, Luke didn't look at me with pity. He looked at me with fear.
"Get the girl out of here," Luke said, gesturing toward the desk. "We have two more SUVs pulling up the driveway. This isn't over."
I turned my chair around to face the desk. "Emma. Come out."
She crawled out from behind the heavy wood, still clutching the revolver, her knuckles white. She looked at the dead man lying in the doorway, the blood pooling slowly into the antique rug, and then looked at me.
There was no disgust in her eyes. There was only a cold, stark realization.
"You're not just a rich man in a chair," she whispered.
"No," I said, rolling up to her and taking the revolver from her hand before slipping it back into my pocket. "I told you. I controlled this city. And tonight, people forgot that."
I grabbed her arm, pulling her gently toward the side door that led to my private elevator—a line that had its own emergency battery pack.
"Where are we going?" she asked, her voice trembling as she kept her eyes off the floor.
"To my panic room in the basement," I said. "You're going to stay inside until the snow turns red."
"What about you?"
May you like
I looked at the Kimber in my hand, racking the slide to chamber a fresh round with a sharp, mechanical clack.
"I have a dinner reservation to make," I said softly.
