Chapter 8 - The High Ground
Dante threw his right arm up to shield his eyes, instinctively angling his torso to keep Paige protected from the blinding glare. The child cried against his chest, shivering from the cold rain that was rapidly soaking through Dante’s dress shirt and the baby's blanket.
""Step away from the ledge, Dante,"" Salvatore’s voice echoed, not from the phone, but through an external loudspeaker mounted on the utility tower. ""You have thirty seconds to lay the child on the landing pad and step back. Do it, and the girl Elena lives to mourn.""
Elena stepped closer to Dante, trembling violently in her wet black dress, her high heels discarded somewhere in the stairwell. ""Dante... what is he talking about? Why does he want Paige?""
""Collateral,"" Dante said quietly, his eyes darting across the perimeter of the roof, scanning the silhouettes emerging from the access doors behind them. Three men on the left. Two on the right. All armed with heavy carbines, maintaining distance. ""Salvatore lost fifty million when the federal task force seized the southern docks last month. He thinks I gave the feds the manifests.""
""Did you?"" Elena whispered.
""I didn't have to. His own brother sold him out,"" Dante said, his voice flat. ""But Salvatore needs someone to blame to keep his captains from executing him. If he takes my daughter, he controls my operations. If he kills her, he breaks me.""
""I won't let him touch her,"" Elena choked out, stepping in front of the baby, her motherly instinct overriding the paralyzing fear.
Dante reached out, pulling Elena firmly behind him. ""Stay behind me, Elena. That isn't an option.""
May you like
Dante looked up into the beam of the searchlight. He reached into his coat pocket, not for his gun, but for his encrypted satellite transmitter. He keyed a three-digit sequence against his thigh. High above the hospital, hidden within the low cloud deck, the deep, rhythmic thrum of twin turbine rotors began to vibrate through the rain. It wasn't Marcus’s commercial helicopter. It was an unmarked military-grade Sikorsky Dante had purchased through an offshore holding company three years ago—his ultimate contingency.
A barrage of sniper fire erupted from the dark sky above. The searchlight shattered in a shower of sparks and falling glass, plunging the rooftop back into torrential darkness.
