Chapter 4 - The Siege of Cicero
"They tracked us," Tessa whispered, horror washing over her as she watched the monitors.
"They didn't track you," Marcus said grimly, pulling a heavy-duty Remington shotgun from a concealed rack behind his desk and chambering a shell with a loud, metallic clack. "They have cell-tower ping sniffers. Any active phone in a three-block radius lights up like a Christmas tree. I told you to ditch your phone, Tessa."
Tessa cursed under her breath, remembering the cracked screen in her pocket. She had forgotten to turn it off.
"What do we do?" Julian asked, clutching the edge of Tessa’s jacket, his small frame trembling violently.
"You stay right here behind this engine block," Tessa told him firmly, her voice leaving no room for argument. She grabbed a heavy steel tire iron from a nearby rack, her knuckles whitening around the cold metal. "I’m not letting anyone touch you."
Outside, Arthur’s amplified voice boomed through a megaphone, echoing off the corrugated metal walls of the garage.
"Marcus Vance! I know you're in there, old man! Hand over the girl and the boy, and I promise your yard remains standing!"
Marcus didn't blink. He walked over to the reinforced steel door, checked the peephole, and spat onto the concrete floor. "Go to hell, Arthur! You're trespassing on private property!"
A heavy burst of automatic gunfire erupted outside, shredding the sheet metal of the garage door. Sparks showered down around them like angry fireflies as bullets punched through the walls. Julian screamed, pressing his hands over his ears and curling into a tight ball behind a massive V8 engine block.
"They're going to breach!" Marcus shouted, tactical experience from his younger days kicking in. "Tessa, take the boy through the back drainage tunnel! It leads out to the drainage canal behind the rail yards. Go!"
"I'm not leaving you here to die!" Tessa yelled over the deafening roar of a second volley of gunfire.
"I'm an old man, Tessa! My clock was running out anyway!" Marcus roared, shoving her toward a low, hidden access door tucked behind a stack of rusted transmissions. "Take the ring! Get Julian to Silas! That's the only way any of us survive this!"
A heavy concussive blast shook the entire building. Arthur’s men had planted an explosive charge on the front steel door.
BOOM.
The front doors blew inward in a shower of twisted metal, smoke, and debris. Shouting enforcers flooded into the garage, their tactical flashlights cutting through the thick smoke.
Marcus raised his shotgun and opened fire, taking down the first two enforcers before a barrage of return fire forced him to dive behind his workbench.
"Go! NOW!" Marcus screamed.
Tessa didn't hesitate anymore. She grabbed Julian by the hand, hauling him up, and shoved him through the low access door just as the back wall of the garage began to splinter under gunfire.
They scrambled into the dark, damp concrete drainage tunnel, the sound of gunfire echoing behind them like thunder. As they crawled through the murky water toward the railway tracks, Tessa looked back one last time.
The garage was burning.
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And she knew, with absolute certainty, that Arthur Moretti would not stop until they were both dead.
There was only one option left. They had to go straight to the lion's den. They had to find Silas Moretti.
