Chapter 2 - THE STEEL BRIEFCASE
Gunfire tore the warehouse apart.
Concrete exploded into dust. The air filled with the deafening chatter of automatic weapons and the blinding flashes of muzzle fire. Dragos’s mercenaries fired wildly into the smoke, while Gabriel Vance’s hidden guards rained hell from the perimeter.
Anna hit the floor hard, her ears ringing, gasping for air that tasted like sulfur and copper.
A heavy, bruising grip clamped onto the collar of her wool coat. Before she could scream, she was dragged backward, her knees scraping brutally against the rough concrete.
Gabriel Vance pulled her behind the thick, rusted hull of an old shipping container. His dark suit was dusted with debris, his lip bleeding sluggishly, but his eyes were chillingly calm. He didn't look like a man who had just missed a sniper bullet by a millimeter. He looked like a wolf deciding what to do with a rabbit.
"Stay down," Gabriel commanded, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that cut entirely through the chaos.
He unholstered a sleek, matte-black handgun from his shoulder holster, leaned out of cover, and fired three rapid, precise shots. Three of Dragos's men dropped instantly.
"My money!" Anna screamed over the gunfire, pure desperation overriding her terror. "The briefcase by the door! I need it!"
Gabriel shot her a look of sheer disbelief. "Are you insane? We are in a kill box."
"My mother is dying!" Anna shrieked, tears of sheer panic cutting tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "That twenty thousand is her treatment! I am not leaving without it!"
Gabriel stared at her. He saw the frantic, feral truth in her eyes. He didn't argue. He moved.
He surged from cover, a blur of calculated violence, providing suppressing fire as he closed the distance to the heavy iron doors. He grabbed the steel briefcase by its handle, shot another mercenary in the kneecap, and sprinted back.
He threw the briefcase at Anna's chest. "Run."
They broke for the loading dock, plunging into the freezing Chicago night. A black, armored SUV roared to a halt before them, the door flying open. Gabriel shoved Anna inside and dove in after her. The vehicle peeled away, tires screaming against the wet asphalt, leaving the sounds of the shootout fading into the dark.
Inside the SUV, the silence was suffocating.
Anna clutched the steel briefcase to her chest, her whole body shaking violently. She had survived. She had the money. Her mother was going to get her chemo.
Gabriel sat across from her. He wiped the blood from his mouth with a pristine linen handkerchief.
"Now," Gabriel said, his voice terrifyingly soft. "Explain to me how a broke PhD student knows the Carpathian hit-code for a sniper strike."
"I... I told you," Anna stammered, shrinking back against the leather seat. "My father was a historian. He specialized in isolated Eastern European dialects. He taught me before he died."
"Dragos doesn't speak in riddles to show off," Gabriel said, leaning closer, dominating the small space of the vehicle. "He uses that dialect because it's a dead language. Nobody knows it. Not the FBI. Not Interpol. And certainly not an adjunct professor."
"I just translated!" Anna cried. "I saved your life!"
"You did," Gabriel agreed. He reached over and tapped the steel briefcase in her arms. "Open it."
Anna blinked. "What?"
"You risked your life for the twenty thousand. Open it. Count it."
Anna’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely undo the metal latches. They popped open with a heavy click. She threw the lid back, expecting to see neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
Her heart stopped.
There was no money.
The briefcase was packed with thick, heavily redacted medical files.
"What is this?" Anna breathed, frantically pulling the files out. They were her mother's files. From the hospital. Every scan, every blood test, every doctor's note from the past three years.
"I wasn't paying you for a translation tonight, Anna," Gabriel said quietly, watching her world shatter. "I brought you to that warehouse because Dragos demanded I bring you. You were the trade."
"Me? Why?"
Gabriel reached into the briefcase and pulled out a faded, dog-eared photograph hidden at the bottom. He handed it to her.
Anna stared at it. It was a picture taken decades ago. It showed Dragos, looking younger and even more ruthless, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with another man.
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The other man was holding a sniper rifle. The other man was Anna’s father.
"Because," Gabriel whispered, "your father wasn't a historian. He was Dragos’s lead assassin. And Dragos thinks you know what he stole before he died."
