Chapter 9 - Firefight in the Hallway
Keller hadn't come to arrest her. Arthur had lied.
The realization hit Elena with the force of a physical blow. Arthur had never intended for her to join him on that plane. The offer was a distraction, a psychological trick to slow her down while Keller's clean-up crew executed her. A dead rogue agent with a suitcase full of bearer bonds was the perfect closed case. Nobody asks questions about a corpse.
""You bastard,"" Elena muttered through clenched teeth.
She grabbed the aluminum case with her left hand, racked the slide of her Glock, and kicked open the bedroom door just as two shadows appeared at the end of the narrow corridor.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the dim apartment. Elena dropped low, rounds splintering the doorframe above her head. Plaster rained down like snow.
She returned fire with two double-taps, aiming low. The ricochets off the floorboards forced the shooters to dive for cover behind the kitchen island.
Elena didn't stay to fight a war of attrition. She spun toward the living room window, unhooking a rappelling carabiner from her belt and snapping it around the cast-iron radiator pipe beneath the windowsill. Wrapping the reinforced nylon cord around her forearm, she hurled the briefcase through the bay window, shattering the glass into a thousand shimmering shards, and dived out into the empty air.
The descent was brutal. The rope caught with a violent jolt between the third and second floors. Elena swung hard, kicking off the brick facade to absorb the momentum, then drew her knife and severed the cord.
She landed in a dumpster filled with discarded cardboard boxes in the alley below, rolling immediately to distribute the impact. Pain flared through her left shoulder, but the adrenaline surged hotter.
She retrieved the briefcase from the alley pavement and sprinted toward the street.
""Target is down in the alley!"" a voice roared from above.
A hail of gunfire chewed into the brickwork near her head. Elena rounded the corner into the pouring rain just as a screech of burning rubber tore through the wet street. A battered silver sedan skidded to a halt directly in front of her, the passenger door flying open.
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""Get in!"" Marcus screamed from behind the wheel.
Elena dove into the passenger seat, slamming the heavy door behind her just as bullets peppered the reinforced rear glass.
