Chapter 17 - The Architect of Malice
Daniel barked out a harsh, bitter laugh that ended in a bloody cough. "Maybe he was. But being broken means you don't feel anything when you break other things. Like his brake lines. Do you know what his face looked like through the windshield when the steering wheel locked up at seventy miles an hour? He knew. Right before he hit the abutment, he looked at the roadside cameras and he knew it was me."
Rachel felt an icy fire surge through her veins, but she forced her body to remain motionless, keeping Daniel’s eyes locked onto hers. In the shadows of the high gantry crane eighty yards behind him, she caught the faint, brief flash of an infrared laser adjusting its sightline through the rain.
"And Melissa?" Rachel asked, stalling, keeping his attention forward. "She loved you. She covered for you for years."
"Melissa is a coward," Daniel spat, taking a step closer, the shotgun leveling fully now. "She thought she could play the devoted, terrified wife while quietly copying my encrypted hard drives. She thought Vance would protect her. But Vance is just another dead man who doesn't know it yet."
Daniel suddenly reached into his harness with his left hand, pulling out a small industrial remote detonator.
"You think this container is my escape route, Rachel?" Daniel smiled, a grotesque, bloody grin. "This container is the decoy. The ammonia tanks aren't hooked up to a venting valve. They’re rigged with six blocks of commercial C-4. When this pier blows, the blast wave will rupture the main fuel pipeline running underneath the bay. This whole harbor will be an inferno."
High above, a sharp *crack* split the storm—a sniper round fired from the gantry crane.
The heavy bullet struck Daniel high in his right shoulder, spinning him halfway around and knocking the shotgun from his grip. But the momentum didn't take him down. Roaring like a wounded beast, Daniel fell backward into the container, his left thumb slamming down onto the detonator’s arming switch.
"Get down!" Vance’s scream tore through the earpiece.
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Rachel didn't hesitate. She threw herself sideways, diving behind the thick steel corner of an adjacent freight container just as the initial blasting caps fired with a deafening, concussive roar.
The shockwave blasted through the corridor, lifting Rachel off the ground and slamming her hard against the corrugated steel wall. Shards of burning shrapnel and superheated vapor tore through the rain, turning the air into an opaque, roaring wall of white-hot fire.
