Chapter 14 - THE SAFE HOUSE BETRAYAL
Captain Mercer gave us sixty seconds to open the door.
The safe house contained Elena, Bruno, Carlo, Rosa, Tomas, Dr. Vale, Tony, and three armed men.
Bruno stood despite the surgical bandage around his shoulder.
His legs trembled from medication, but his eyes were clear.
He positioned himself between Elena and the front windows.
“We cannot fight police in a residential street,” Tony said.
“Those are not police.”
“Some of them are.”
“That makes it worse.”
Carlo examined the back hallway.
“The kitchen exit leads to an alley.”
“Mercer will have it covered.”
“There is a crawlspace beneath the pantry,” Tony’s sister said over the phone.
She had inherited the house from their mother and remembered hiding there during childhood games.
The crawlspace connected to the garage next door through a maintenance opening.
We moved Elena and Rosa first.
Tomas followed with the stuffed bunny and medical supplies.
Dr. Vale helped Carlo lower himself through the pantry floor.
Bruno refused to enter until Elena called him.
The dog crawled awkwardly after her, protecting the injured shoulder.
Tony and I remained above with the three guards.
Mercer began counting down through the loudspeaker.
At ten, the front windows exploded inward.
Gas canisters rolled across the floor.
The vapor was not ordinary tear gas.
It carried the faint bitter scent of Kessler’s compound.
I pulled a wet cloth over my mouth.
Tony kicked one canister back through the broken window.
A man outside collapsed before reaching cover.
The front door burst open.
We fired low, aiming for legs and body armor rather than heads.
Real officers might have been mixed among the Saints.
Mercer had counted on that restraint.
His men did not share it.
Bullets tore through the walls as we retreated toward the pantry.
One of my guards fell near the stairs.
Another dragged him behind the refrigerator.
Tony opened the crawlspace hatch.
“You first.”
“My house.”
“Your funeral.”
“I already attended one tonight.”
He shoved me toward the opening.
I dropped into darkness and crawled beneath the floor.
Behind us, the kitchen filled with gas.
Tony entered last and pulled the hatch closed.
The tunnel was barely two feet high.
Elena’s breathing echoed ahead.
Bruno moved beside her despite pain that would have stopped most men.
We reached the neighboring garage.
The maintenance door had been bricked over years earlier.
Carlo attacked the mortar with a tire iron.
Tomas helped.
The wall gave way as boots entered the pantry behind us.
We pushed through the opening into a garage filled with gardening tools and a dusty minivan.
The keys hung near the door.
For one brief moment, escape seemed possible.
Then the side entrance opened.
Adrian Cole stood there holding a shotgun.
The young Saint who had escaped from the clinic looked exhausted and terrified.
He pointed the weapon at Elena.
Bruno growled.
“Do not,” Adrian said.
His hands shook.
“If the dog moves, Mercer kills my sister.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“In the police van.”
“How old?”
“Fifteen.”
“Then help us save her.”
“He said he would shoot her if I did not bring Elena.”
“Mercer will kill her whether you obey or not.”
Adrian’s eyes filled with the knowledge that he already believed me.
Behind him, a girl screamed from the alley.
He turned his head.
Bruno lunged.
The dog struck the shotgun aside with his chest.
The weapon fired into the ceiling.
Adrian fell backward.
The movement tore Bruno’s wound open.
Blood spread through the bandage.
Elena crawled to him.
“Bruno, stay.”
He tried to stand.
A dart struck his flank.
Then a second dart entered his neck.
Mercer stood in the alley with a tranquilizer rifle.
Bruno staggered once and collapsed.
I fired at Mercer.
He pulled Adrian’s sister in front of him.
The girl wore a school sweatshirt and had tape across her mouth.
My bullet struck the wall instead.
Mercer’s men entered from both ends of the alley.
Tony raised his pistol.
A red laser settled on Rosa’s chest.
Another appeared on Carlo’s forehead.
We were trapped between hostages and uniforms.
“Put the weapons down,” Mercer said.
Tomas held Elena behind him.
“You are not taking my daughter.”
Mercer smiled.
“I already did once.”
The words confirmed Elena’s memory of the gold badge in the van.
Tomas charged him.
A police officer struck Tomas across the face with a rifle.
He fell beside Bruno.
Elena screamed.
I lowered my weapon.
Tony followed.
Our men did the same.
Mercer approached me and removed the flash drive from my coat.
He did not find the original ledger because Tony had hidden it beneath Rosa’s medical blanket before the raid.
“You should have stayed a neighborhood king,” Mercer said.
“You were good at collecting from restaurants.”
“You were never built to save anyone.”
He ordered his men to place Elena in the police van.
Dr. Vale stepped in front of her.
“She is medically unstable.”
Mercer struck the doctor with the back of his hand.
Carlo moved toward him.
Three rifles stopped him.
Elena knelt beside Bruno and pressed her face against his neck.
“He goes with me.”
Mercer looked at the unconscious dog.
“He is dying.”
“He goes with me.”
Something in her voice unsettled him.
Perhaps he remembered that Bruno had already ruined one burial.
He ordered two officers to load the dog into the van.
Elena climbed in beside him.
Adrian’s sister was released into her brother’s arms, but Mercer ordered both of them arrested immediately afterward.
Promises meant nothing to men who counted on badges to make lies official.
The van pulled away with Elena and Bruno inside.
Mercer remained long enough to place handcuffs on me.
“We are going to the precinct,” he announced loudly for the neighbors gathering at their windows.
The moment the van disappeared, he leaned close.
“You are going to the amusement park.”
“Salvatore wants you alive for the auction.”
“Why?”
“Because buyers trust a route more when the boss himself appears to approve it.”
He pushed me into a police vehicle with Tony and Carlo.
Rosa, Tomas, and Dr. Vale were placed in another.
The convoy moved south.
I counted turns and listened to traffic.
Mercer believed the gas, restraints, and armed escorts had ended our options.
He forgot the original ledger remained with Rosa.
He also forgot Father Angelo had not been at the safe house.
Tony had sent him a single emergency message before the raid.
CHOIR SINGS AT MIDNIGHT.
The priest had contacts inside federal law enforcement through years of prison ministry.
Whether any would arrive in time was another question.
Carlo sat opposite me with his wrists bound.
“Mercer took the wrong flash drive,” he said quietly.
“What was on it?”
“A tracking program Isaiah built.”
The device would transmit its location the moment someone connected it to a network.
“Can Father Angelo see it?”
“If he received the access code.”
“What code?”
“Four-twelve.”
I almost smiled.
The convoy drove for twenty minutes before the city noise thinned and ocean wind began striking the vehicle.
Carlo used the movement to test every weak point in his restraints.
Tony had hidden a narrow blade inside the seam of his belt, but Mercer’s officers had removed it during the search.
I found something better beneath the bench.
A broken screw protruded from the metal frame.
I worked the plastic tie against it until my wrist bled.
Carlo watched without speaking.
“Do you remember the winter our fathers locked us in the wine cellar?” he asked.
“You broke three bottles trying to escape.”
“You drank the fourth.”
“We were thirteen.”
“You said panic wastes air.”
“I said many intelligent things before meeting women.”
Tony shifted closer to block the officers’ view through the front partition.
The tie began to split.
Carlo lowered his voice.
“If we reach the park, Harlan will separate us.”
“Then we move before the gates.”
“Mercer expects that.”
“He expects the old Luca.”
“What does the new one do?”
“He trusts a priest, a traitor, and a tracking device hidden in a child’s toy.”
Tony gave a dry laugh.
“That is either growth or brain damage.”
The tie broke around my wrist.
I kept my hands together and passed the sharpened edge to Carlo.
Through the steel wall, a radio voice reported that the lead van carrying Elena had changed direction toward the waterfront.
Mercer cursed and ordered the rest of the convoy to continue toward Rockaway.
Two plans were operating at once.
Harlan wanted the auction at the park.
Salvatore wanted Elena and the evidence on the ship.
Their partnership had begun to fracture.
Fractures create openings.
They also bring buildings down.
The police vehicle suddenly stopped.
Gunfire erupted outside.
Mercer shouted orders through the radio.
The rear doors opened.
Marco stood in the road wearing a stolen police jacket and holding a rifle.
He cut our restraints and said he had escaped Red Hook during the confusion.
Before I could decide whether to trust him, the tracking phone in Carlo’s pocket lit up.
The flash drive had gone online.
Its location was not the amusement park.
It was aboard a vessel moving away from the Brooklyn waterfront.
Mercer had sent the evidence to the ship.
Then another signal appeared beside it.
May you like
The tiny camera inside Elena’s stuffed bunny was transmitting again.
She and Bruno were already on the water.
