Chapter 6 - Shadows on Queen Anne Hill
Nora dropped the duffel bag onto the bed, pulled a stainless steel kitchen utility knife from her nightstand, and moved silently toward the hallway.
"Lily, stay in your room," Nora commanded in a fierce, low whisper. "Under the bed. Do not make a sound until Mommy calls you. Go!"
Lily saw the raw, terrifying urgency in her mother’s face. The little girl didn't ask questions; she scrambled into her bedroom and slid under the floral dust ruffle without a whimper.
Nora stepped into the living room.
Through the sheer side panel of the front door, she saw two figures standing on the porch.
They weren't Marcus Kane. They weren't wearing the sharp charcoal wool coats of the Vale organization.
These men wore heavy oilskin jackets, the kind worn by commercial fishermen along the Alaskan docks. The taller of the two had a jagged tribal tattoo running up the left side of his neck and carried a heavy crowbar concealed along his forearm. The shorter man had a snub-nosed revolver resting inside the pocket of his slicker, his hand wrapped around the grip.
The Rossi family.
They hadn't just ambushed Adrian at the docks; they had tracked Marcus’s vehicle movements from the hospital. When Marcus had sent the Suburban to watch Nora’s house, Rossi’s spotters had followed the breadcrumbs directly to Adrian’s most vulnerable flank.
Thump. Thump.
The front door shook against its frame.
"Open up, doctor," a gravelly voice called through the wood, accented with the harsh, nasal vowels of South Boston. "We just want to talk about your high-priority patient. Open the door, or we kick it off the hinges."
Nora backed toward the kitchen, her grip slippery on the handle of the utility knife. Her mind raced through the layout of the house. The back door led to a fenced garden, but the fence was six feet of solid cedar. She couldn't get Lily over that fence without being seen from the street.
"Go away!" Nora shouted, trying to make her voice carry to the neighbors. "The police have this address flagged! They'll be here in two minutes!"
A dry, ugly laugh came from the porch. "Sweetheart, the precinct just got three false reports of an active shooter at the Seattle Center. Your street is completely clear. Unlock the deadbolt, or we come in through the windows."
The sound of shattering glass erupted from the dining room.
The shorter man had smashed the bay window with the butt of his gun, kicking through the wooden muntins, sending shards of glass raining over Lily’s paper stars.
Nora lunged into the kitchen, grabbed a heavy cast-iron skillet from the stove, and prepared to fight for her child’s life with whatever iron she had left.
The front door bowed inward with a tremendous splintering crash.
BANG.
The sound wasn't a shoulder hitting wood. It was a single, deafening gunshot from the driveway.
A second shot followed instantly—CRACK.
Through the broken dining room window, Nora saw the shorter man in the oilskin jacket freeze. His eyes widened in shock. A small, neat puncture appeared in the center of his chest, blowing out the back of his slicker in a spray of dark crimson. He collapsed forward over the windowsill, his revolver clattering against the hardwood floor.
Outside, the screech of burning rubber tore through the quiet street.
The black Suburban that had been parked down the road rammed straight into the rear of the Rossi crew’s sedan, crushing the trunk into the back seat with an ear-splitting crunch of folding metal.
Marcus Kane stepped out of the Suburban’s passenger seat, holding an automatic shotgun at his hip.
He didn't yell. He didn't issue commands. He racked the slide with a heavy clack-clack and fired directly through the front windshield of the Rossi vehicle, eliminating the driver before the man could draw a weapon.
The tall man on the porch turned to run, dropping the crowbar, but two more guards in dark windbreakers rounded the corner of the garage, tackling him into the wet hydrangeas with brutal, synchronized efficiency.
Silence descended over the street again, save for the rain hissing against the hot engine block of the crushed sedan.
Marcus walked calmly up the front steps, stepping over the shattered glass on the porch. He wore surgical gloves and carried a heavy first-aid trauma kit in one hand.
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He looked through the broken front door at Nora, who was standing in the kitchen doorway holding a bloody utility knife and a cast-iron skillet, her chest heaving, her eyes wild.
"Pack the girl's things, Dr. Vance," Marcus said calmly, as if he were announcing a dinner reservation. "The hospital was compromised twenty minutes ago. Adrian is on the move. And whether you like it or not, you two are coming with us."
