Chapter 3 - The Wounded Beast
"Quiet," Lorenzo hissed, drawing a sleek, suppressed Beretta from his inner holster with his left hand.
He couldn't use his right arm—the bullet had torn clean through his shoulder muscle, rendering it useless. He cocked the pistol with a single, practiced motion using his knee and teeth, his face twisting in agonizing pain.
Emma whimpered softly, and I immediately pulled her behind my back, shielding her tiny body with mine.
Clang!
Another heavy blow struck the trapdoor above. The wooden bolts groaned under the pressure.
"Hey! Check the latch on this old potting bench!" a rough voice shouted from the shed. "The floor looks uneven over here!"
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. If they opened that door, there was nowhere to run. The vault was a dead end. Lorenzo was bleeding out, I was an unarmed former nursing student, and Emma was just a three-year-old child holding a stuffed rabbit.
Lorenzo didn't hesitate. He maneuvered himself behind the steel desk, leveled the pistol at the ceiling, and waited, his breathing perfectly controlled despite the blood loss.
Scrrrrt.
The bench above was being dragged across the floor.
"Found a ring!" the voice yelled. "Get the crowbar!"
Just as the metal tip of a crowbar wedged into the crack of the trapdoor, a loud, sudden explosion rattled the foundations of the mansion fifty yards away.
BOOM!
The ground shook beneath our feet. Dust rained down from the concrete ceiling.
Upstairs in the shed, the guard dropped his crowbar with a loud clatter.
"What the hell was that?!" a voice screamed through the radio static filtering down into the vault.
"Eastern perimeter gate!" another voice shouted back. "Car bomb! Move! All units to the front gates!"
The heavy footsteps above scrambled away, running toward the doors and sprinting across the gravel toward the front courtyard.
Within thirty seconds, the shed above us was completely silent, save for the rhythmic dripping of water from a broken pipe in the ceiling.
Lorenzo lowered his pistol slowly, his head resting back against the steel rack. He let out a long, shaky breath.
May you like
"Car bomb," I muttered, looking at the security monitors. "Did you have a contingency plan?"
"No," Lorenzo murmured, his eyes flickering shut for a brief second. "Which means someone else just declared war on my sister."
