Chapter 6
Upstairs, the screaming intensified. The gunfire from the shotgun had panicked the crowd, and the sudden loss of light was the breaking point. It was a stampede.
I felt my way along the stone wall, moving toward the heavy steel door that led from the cellar to the sub-basement vault. This was where Fiona was trying to force Arthur and Matthias.
In the dark, my senses heightened. I smelled the sharp metallic tang of blood from the crushed mercenary mixed with the rich, fermented scent of the wine.
I reached the vault door. It was slightly ajar.
Fiona must have already forced them down here before I cut the lights.
I slipped inside, pressing my back against the freezing steel of the vault’s outer chamber.
“Turn on a flashlight!” Fiona’s voice screamed from the inner vault.
“I can’t see!” Matthias wailed.
A single, narrow beam of a tactical flashlight cut through the dark. One of the mercenaries who had escorted them down was scanning the room.
Fiona had Matthias by the hair, holding him against the biometric scanner of the massive titanium vault door. Arthur Dre was on the floor, clutching his chest, breathing in ragged, terrifying gasps. A heart attack. The stress was finally killing him.
“Scan your eye, Matthias, or I put a bullet in your spine!” Fiona ordered.
“It won’t work!” Matthias sobbed. “The power is completely out! The scanner is dead!”
Fiona looked at the scanner. She realized he was right. Without the backup grid, the electronic lock was permanently engaged. The vault was a tomb.
“You stupid, arrogant little boy,” Fiona hissed, pressing the gun to his head. “Do you know what they are going to do to me when I come back without those ledgers? I am dead. Which means you are going to die first.”
She pulled the hammer back on the pistol.
“Fiona, drop it,” a voice said from the darkness outside the vault.
The mercenary swung his flashlight toward the door.
Standing in the doorway, bleeding heavily from his shoulder but holding the combat shotgun he had taken from the man I crushed in the wine cellar, was Elias Thorne.
Fiona froze. “Elias. You don’t want to do this. You’re a numbers guy. You’re not a killer.”
“I was a numbers guy,” Elias said, racking the shotgun with his good arm, the sound echoing like thunder in the concrete room. “Then your idiot boyfriend framed me for his crimes and sent me to a place where I had to learn new skills. Drop the gun.”
Fiona’s eyes darted around the room. She was calculating the odds. The mercenary next to her raised his submachine gun toward Elias.
“No!” Matthias screamed, realizing he was caught in the crossfire.
I didn’t think. I acted.
I stepped out from the shadows of the outer chamber, holding a heavy, unbroken bottle of vintage wine I had grabbed from the floor.
I swung it as hard as I could at the mercenary’s head.
The bottle shattered against his helmet. It didn’t knock him out, but the impact and the sudden shower of liquid disoriented him enough that his flashlight dropped, spinning across the floor and plunging the room into erratic, spinning shadows.
Elias fired.
The shotgun blast hit the mercenary squarely in the chest, throwing him backward into the titanium wall. He crumpled to the floor, instantly incapacitated.
Fiona shrieked, firing blindly into the dark. Her bullet ricocheted off the vault door, showering sparks over Matthias.
I dropped to the floor, covering my stomach, curling into a protective ball.
Elias pumped the shotgun again, but before he could fire, a heavy silence fell over the room.
The spinning flashlight illuminated the scene in terrible, fragmented bursts.
Matthias was on the floor, unharmed, cowering in a puddle of his own urine.
Arthur Dre was unconscious, his breathing shallow.
And Fiona…
Fiona was standing completely still. She looked down at her chest.
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In the chaos, one of her own ricocheting bullets had found a home. A dark red stain was rapidly spreading across the pristine ivory silk of her designer gown, just below the $180,000 diamond necklace.
She dropped the gun. Her knees buckled. She collapsed onto the cold concrete floor, her eyes wide with shock.
