Chapter 14 - The Edge of the Pier
""Pull over, Officer Miller,"" Clara said, her voice dropping into complete, flat stillness.
Miller didn't turn his head. He accelerated, the patrol car hitting seventy miles per hour along the potholed access road between rusty shipping containers. ""Can't do that, ma'am. Orders came straight from the top. Arthur Vance pays our department’s pension fund. He wants this tied up neatly before the morning financial markets open.""
""You helped him frame Julian,"" Clara said, piecing together the terrifying architecture of the conspiracy. Julian hadn't been the architect at all; he had been the spoiled decoy, an arrogant child sent to the slaughter while his father orchestrated the entire harvest.
""Julian was sloppy,"" Miller sneered. ""Putting hands on you, screaming in the hallway like an amateur. A man with real power doesn't leave bruises where people can see them. He erases the person entirely.""
Clara looked down at her hands. The small black transmitter was gone, taken by Agent Harris. But tucked inside her sleeve was the masonry chisel the intruder had dropped on her master bedroom floor when he smashed Julian's safe—she had slipped it into her coat during the chaos.
They approached the edge of Pier 42. A massive cargo freighter loomed against the gray morning sky, its diesel engines thrumming with low, industrial vibrations. Two black SUVs were parked beneath the loading cranes.
""End of the line,"" Miller said, beginning to pump the brakes.
May you like
Clara didn't wait for the vehicle to stop completely.
She whipped the heavy steel chisel from her sleeve and drove the beveled edge straight into Miller’s right shoulder. Miller roared in pain, his hands ripping away from the steering wheel as the cruiser careened violently sideways toward the concrete barrier at sixty miles per hour.
