Chapter 9: The Last Desperate Play
Margaret Prescott was not a woman who surrendered gracefully. Even while sitting in a holding cell, stripped of her silk suits and forced into an orange jumpsuit, her mind was working frantically. She had used her one phone call not to a lawyer, but to a fixer. A man named Silas, who specialized in "expediting" problems for the ultra-wealthy.
If Emily didn't testify, the state assault charges against Ethan would collapse. If the state charges collapsed, Margaret believed she could leverage a plea deal on the federal charges by claiming she was under extreme duress. It was a delusional plan, born of desperation, but desperate people do dangerous things.
That night, a black, unmarked van idled half a mile down the dirt road from our mountain safehouse.
Inside the van, Silas and two heavily armed mercenaries checked their night-vision goggles and suppressed tactical rifles. Margaret had promised them one million dollars from a hidden offshore account if they could retrieve Emily and "convince" her to drop the charges.
"Target is isolated," Silas whispered into his comms, looking at the thermal imaging drone feed on his monitor. "One structure. Looks like two heat signatures inside. We go in fast, grab the girl, and put a bullet in anyone else."
They slipped out of the van, melting into the dense Appalachian forest. They moved with professional silence, creeping up the ridge toward the cabin.
But Silas made one fatal miscalculation. He thought he was hunting civilians.
Two hundred yards from the cabin, the lead mercenary’s boot brushed against a barely visible tripwire hidden in the underbrush.
There was no explosion. Just a faint, electronic click.
Instantly, the forest was bathed in blinding, high-intensity strobe lights mounted in the trees. The mercenaries ripped their night-vision goggles off, crying out in pain as the intense light seared their retinas.
Before they could adjust, a deafening acoustic hailing device—a localized sound cannon—blasted a frequency so agonizing it dropped all three men to their knees, clutching their bleeding ears.
Out of the shadows, Marcus, the former Delta Force operator, materialized like a ghost. He didn't use a gun. He used the blunt end of a modified tactical baton. With terrifying speed and precision, he neutralized the two mercenaries, snapping wrists and shattering collarbones in a matter of seconds.
Silas tried to pull his sidearm, fighting through the blinding light and deafening sound.
A heavy combat boot stomped down on his wrist, crushing it against the rocks. Silas screamed, dropping the gun.
The sound cannon abruptly shut off. The strobe lights held steady, illuminating the forest.
I stood over Silas, holding a suppressed sidearm aimed squarely at his forehead. Marcus stood behind me, tying zip-ties around the groaning mercenaries' wrists.
"Margaret sent you, didn't she?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.
Silas spat blood onto the leaves. "You're dead, lady."
I didn't blink. I simply shifted my aim slightly and fired a single, suppressed round into the dirt a millimeter from Silas's ear. He flinched violently, a whimper escaping his throat.
"I'm going to give you a message to take back to Margaret," I said, crouching down so he was forced to look into my eyes. "You tell her that Victoria Hart commands this battlefield. You tell her that every time she tries to strike back, I will break another piece of her empire. And then, I'm going to have you and your boys arrested for attempted kidnapping."
Marcus dragged them to their feet. "Local sheriff is on the way, Colonel. Looks like Margaret just added federal conspiracy to commit murder to her tab."
May you like
I looked up at the cabin. The steel shutters were secure. Inside, Emily was safe.
"Load them up," I ordered. "Tomorrow, we go to court."
