Chapter 8: The Sentinel Warehouse
Harper’s phone was found beside a maintenance elevator.
The tracker inside her purse was still moving.
Naomi and I followed the signal toward the abandoned Sentinel distribution center near Route Nine.
The warehouse had been closed for five years, but fresh tire tracks cut through the gravel.
Naomi wanted us to wait for the tactical team.
Then Harper’s tracker stopped moving.
I entered through a broken loading door.
The building smelled of rust, fuel, and wet concrete.
Harper was tied to a chair beneath a hanging work light.
Daniel stood beside her.
Blood covered one side of his face.
I raised my weapon.
“Step away from her.”
Daniel lifted both hands.
“I didn’t take her.”
Two armed men emerged from behind the storage racks.
Naomi fired first.
The work light shattered.
Darkness swallowed the warehouse.
Gunfire erupted between the steel columns.
I moved toward Harper’s last position, cut the restraints, and pulled her behind a concrete barrier.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
Daniel crawled toward us.
“Voss is cleaning everyone connected to Ashfall,” he gasped. “Grant, me, even Harper.”
“You entered my house.”
“Yes.”
“You brought those men.”
“I thought they were there to search. Sloane attacked Violet when she refused to tell us where she hid the card.”
“You watched.”
Daniel’s eyes filled with something that looked like shame.
“I tried to stop him.”
“Not soon enough.”
A laser sight moved across Daniel’s chest.
I saw it a fraction of a second before the shot.
I dragged Daniel down.
The bullet struck his shoulder instead of his heart.
Naomi’s team breached the building from both sides.
The remaining gunmen fled through a rear loading bay.
One was captured.
The other disappeared.
Daniel’s breathing became shallow.
He grabbed my sleeve.
“Locker 317.”
“Where?”
“Union Station.”
“What is inside?”
“Everything I kept in case Voss turned on me.”
Daniel’s grip weakened.
“Violet made a copy. She is smarter than all of us.”
A warning alarm began sounding.
Naomi looked toward the far wall.
Explosives had been wired along the support columns.
“Move!” she shouted.
We carried Daniel toward the loading door.
Harper stumbled beside me as the first explosion tore through the warehouse.
The blast threw us onto the gravel.
Flames rolled through the broken windows.
Paramedics reached Daniel, but he was unconscious.
As they loaded him into an ambulance, his phone vibrated inside an evidence bag.
A message appeared on the screen.
May you like
LOCKER COMPROMISED. RECOVER THE GIRL BEFORE HER BIRTHDAY.
Violet’s sixteenth birthday was less than thirty-six hours away.
