Chapter 8 - Labyrinth of Steel
Behind her, the sharp, hollow crack of a gunshot echoed off the corrugated metal of the containers. The bullet struck a rusted steel corner inches from Maya’s head, showering her in microscopic flakes of paint and oxidized iron. She didn’t look back. She ducked into a narrow, dimly lit alleyway formed between two rows of red and blue forty-foot freight containers.
Water pooled around her ankles, icy and foul with diesel residue. Her off-white jumpsuit was soaked through, heavy and clinging to her trembling skin, plastered with mud and grit. She could hear Marcus’s measured, unhurried footsteps behind her—he wasn’t running. He didn't need to. The pier was a dead end, bounded on three sides by deep, turbulent harbor waters and on the fourth by a twelve-foot razor-wire security fence that was locked tight from the outside.
""Maya!"" Marcus’s voice carried through the rain, calm, conversational, and terrifyingly close. ""You’re making this undignified. If you step out now, I promise it will be instantaneous. If you make me hunt you through these stacks, I will make sure Julian watches you bleed before I finish him off too.""
Maya pressed her back into the deep recess of a container door, clutching her ribs. Her breathing was too loud; she jammed her fist against her mouth to stifle the ragged gasps escaping her lungs. She looked around desperately for any kind of weapon. A discarded rusted crowbar lay halfway under a wooden pallet ten feet away.
She dropped to her knees, crawling through the puddle to reach the iron bar. Her fingers brushed the freezing, pitted metal just as a beam of bright white LED light swept across the mud ahead of her.
Marcus turned the corner.
Maya froze on her hands and knees in the water, her eyes wide with terror, staring straight into the barrel of Marcus’s pistol. The rain dripped off the brim of his coat, casting deep shadows across his hollow, indifferent eyes.
""Predictable to the end,"" Marcus sighed, raising the weapon to align with her forehead. ""You should have stayed in the kitchen, Maya.""
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Before his finger could tighten on the trigger, the deafening roar of a supercharged V8 engine shattered the storm. A massive pair of high-intensity halogen headlights exploded around the corner of the container alleyway, tearing through the darkness at fifty miles an hour.
Marcus swung around, blinded by the incandescent glare, his eyes wide in sudden shock as the front bumper of the gray SUV barreled directly toward him.
