Chapter 4 - A Shattered Windshield
They left The Foundry through the back loading bay. The Pittsburgh afternoon had turned dark and foreboding, heavy charcoal clouds rolling over Mount Washington, promising a late spring thunderstorm.
Gabriel’s vehicle was an armor-plated Cadillac Escalade, black as obsidian and completely devoid of exterior branding. Two identical SUVs waited behind it, their engines purring quietly in the brick alleyway.
"Mason, you ride in the second vehicle with Marcus," Gabriel ordered, nodding toward the military-looking bodyguard. "He’ll take you to the safehouse on Grandview Avenue. You don't leave that house, you don't look out the windows, and you don't answer the door unless Marcus gives you the clearance phrase."
Mason looked at Claire, fear and stubborn defiance waging war across his young features. "I'm not leaving her, Gabriel."
"You're not leaving her, kid; you're keeping her alive," Marcus said, stepping between them with a calm, practiced efficiency that spoke of twenty years in private security. "If Julian's contractors spot two Bennett siblings together, they have two targets in one basket. You get in the truck. Miss Bennett rides with the boss."
Mason looked at Claire. She gave him a firm, reassuring nod. "Go, Mase. I know every square inch of that shop. Dad taught me where the floorboards creak and where the wall studs are hollow. You wouldn't know what to look for anyway. I'll meet you on Mount Washington by dinner."
Reluctantly, Mason climbed into the second SUV. The doors slammed with a heavy, pressurized thud, and the vehicle peeled out of the alley toward the Liberty Bridge.
Claire climbed into the passenger seat of Gabriel’s vehicle. The interior smelled like expensive Italian leather, cedarwood, and the faint, bitter metallic tang of Gabriel’s bespoke cologne. As Gabriel slid behind the wheel, he didn't turn on the radio. He put the vehicle in gear, maneuvering the heavy truck through the narrow, potholed back alleys of the Strip District with effortless control.
"You drive yourself?" Claire asked, glancing at him from the passenger side. "I assumed a man with your reputation had chauffeurs for everything."
"I like being in control of my own direction," Gabriel replied, checking his side mirrors. "Especially when people are looking for a reason to run me off the road."
They turned south onto Penn Avenue, passing the trendy coffee shops and renovated brick lofts that had replaced the gritty produce markets of Claire's childhood. As they crossed 31st Street into the older, worn-out borders of Lawrenceville, Claire felt a cold knot tighten in her gut.
Bennett Fine Lithography & Print stood on the corner of an alleyway, a two-story red-brick building with flaking gold lettering on the front display window. The neon sign in the window had been half-burned out since 2014. Outside, parked across the narrow street near an abandoned auto repair bay, sat a nondescript silver sedan with dark tinted windows.
"Don't look," Gabriel said quietly, keeping his hands relaxed on the steering wheel. "Ten o'clock. Two men inside."
"Are they Vance's men?"
"No," Gabriel murmured, his eyes hardening into flint. "Julian doesn't hire locals. These are subcontracted muscle from Youngstown. Cheap, aggressive, and sloppy."
Gabriel didn't pull into the shop's driveway. Instead, he accelerated smoothly past the building, turned down a side alley, and brought the heavy SUV to a halt behind an overgrown row of privet hedges. Before Claire could ask what the plan was, Gabriel reached into the compartment beneath the center console and withdrew a matte-black Sig Sauer handgun. He checked the magazine with a sharp, practiced snap and chambered a round.
"Stay down," he said.
"Wait!" Claire reached out, grabbing the sleeve of his dark shirt. "You're just going to walk out there? There are two of them!"
Gabriel looked down at her hand on his forearm, then up at her face. The corners of his mouth lifted into that faint, dangerous half-smile. "Miss Bennett, Julian Vance forgot one fundamental truth when he decided to play this game."
"What's that?"
"He forgot whose name is on the deed to this city."
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Gabriel kicked his door open.
A split second later, the sharp, deafening crack of a rifle shot shattered the Escalade's reinforced passenger windshield, web-cracking the glass into a thousand milky fractals.
