Chapter 3 - Blood on the Ledger
The stolen utility truck tore through the industrial district, its headlights off as Edgar navigated the slick asphalt by the dim glow of the streetlights. Beside him, Nell spread a series of laminated street maps across her knees, her fingers tracking the layout of the city water treatment facility.
"The main gate will be monitored," she said, her voice sharp and focused. "Mercer’s men will bottle Brody up inside the pump station. It’s a reinforced concrete building with only two access points: the administrative foyer and the subterranean sludge conduits."
"Sludge conduits?" Edgar grimaced. "You seem remarkably familiar with municipal waste infrastructure."
"When your boss refuses to audit his own construction contractors, someone has to read the sewer excavation permits," Nell retorted dryly without looking up from the map. "Take the service alley behind the chemical storage tanks. There is an emergency intake valve that bypasses the perimeter gate."
Edgar swerved the truck down an unpaved access lane, grinding the tires through gravel before killing the ignition fifty yards from the facility fence. The night was dead silent except for the low, rhythmic hum of massive industrial centrifuges.
Through the chain-link fence, Edgar spotted the black Suburban parked crookedly near the administrative steps. The vehicle’s hazard lights were dark, its engine idling quietly—the signature setup of an active wet-work crew.
"Wait in the truck," Edgar ordered, drawing his weapon.
"I’m not sitting in a dark alley waiting to be ambushed, Edgar," Nell said firmly, pulling a compact 9mm pistol from her medical satchel.
Edgar raised an eyebrow. "You carry?"
"I work for a mafia boss who runs three casinos and half the city’s shipping ports," she said smoothly, chambering a round with clean, mechanical precision. "Did you honestly think I only carried spare pens and antacids?"
Before Edgar could respond, the sharp crack of a suppressed gunshot shattered the silence from inside the pump station, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
They moved together, vaulting the low drainage pipe and slipping through an unlocked maintenance portal into the pump station’s cavernous interior. The smell of chlorine and ozone hung heavy in the air. Below them, massive iron vats churned murky water into foam, their machinery drowning out the sound of their footfalls on the catwalk.
At the far end of the catwalk, a burly man in an oil-stained work jacket was backing away toward an open vat, clutching a bleeding shoulder. Standing ten yards away was a shooter dressed in tactical black, his weapon raised, leveling it directly at the man’s forehead.
It was 11:26 p.m. Marcus Brody had one minute left to live.
Edgar didn’t shout a warning. He raised his Colt and fired a single shot that struck the mercenary’s shoulder, spinning him violently around. The shooter’s weapon clattered onto the metal grating. A second mercenary emerged from the shadows near the control booth, raising an assault rifle, but Nell fired twice from behind an electrical conduit. Her rounds struck the guard's tactical vest with enough force to knock him off balance, sending him crashing over the railing into the swirling holding tank twenty feet below.
Edgar rushed forward, kicking the first mercenary’s dropped gun across the catwalk, and grabbed Marcus Brody by his uninjured collar.
"On your feet, Marcus! Move!"
Brody looked at Edgar with wide, terror-stricken eyes. "Mr. Yarborough? You... you sent them to kill me!"
"If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be breathing right now," Edgar snapped, hauling the trembling watchman toward the emergency exit. "Mercer turned on both of us. Nell arranged a car for you. Did you bring the receipt?"
Brody fumbled inside his blood-soaked flannel shirt and pulled out a plastic sandwich bag containing an aged, yellowed slip of paper. "I kept it. Ten years, Mr. Yarborough. I swear to God I never showed it to the cops!"
"Keep it in your pocket," Nell instructed calmly, applying pressure to Brody’s shoulder wound with a clean roll of gauze from her bag. "The driver is waiting at the rail spur behind the grain silo. You’re going to a safehouse outside the state line."
They guided the wounded man through the rear fire door just as the headlights of a second SUV swept into the facility yard. Edgar fired three rounds into the radiator of the oncoming vehicle, blinding the driver with a cloud of boiling steam and antifreeze as the truck careened off the gravel driveway.
Nell pushed Brody into the backseat of an awaiting green sedan driven by a trusted dockworker. The car peeled out into the darkness, its taillights vanishing within seconds.
Edgar leaned against the brick wall, reloading his magazine. His knuckles were raw, and his expensive bespoke suit was ruined with grease and soot. He looked at Nell, whose navy dress was splattered with blood from Brody’s arm.
"Three down," Edgar said, his chest heaving. "Eight to go."
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Nell checked her phone. The screen flashed with a high-priority red alert.
"Sister Teresa Delgado," Nell whispered, her voice tightening with dread. "11:33 p.m. She runs the St. Jude sanctuary downtown. And the team assigned to her just stopped reporting."
