"Counselor," the deep voice drawled, dripping with amusement and calculated malice. It wasn't my father. It was the thick, slow southern cadence of Lieutenant Knox Sullivan. "You're a long way from your federal playground in Atlanta. Down here in Bessemer, we handle family disputes face-to-face. Your daddy and I are having a little trip down memory lane. I suggest you turn that pretty government sedan around and drive back east before you make a mess you can't clean up."
"Sullivan," I said, my voice dead, flat, and hollowed out of every emotion except pure homicidal focus. "If you lay a single finger on my father, if you so much as raise your voice in that room, I will not just prosecute you. I will dismantle your department, strip your pension, and bury you under twenty-five years in federal penitentiary under Title Eighteen, Section Two-Forty-Two. You will die behind bars."
A dry, wheezing chuckle drifted through the speaker.
"Big words for a boy whose daddy spent his whole life running scared," Sullivan whispered. "Ask him about the summer of nineteen-eighty-four, Lennox. Ask him about the old warehouse on Fourth Avenue before you start handing out indictments."
The connection severed with a clean, electronic beep.
"Mr. Lennox! Look out!" Ava’s shriek pierced the pouring rain beside me.
I dropped the phone into my pocket and snapped my head up. The blinding twin halogen beams of the black police-interceptor SUV were bearing down on us across the flooded gravel lot of the abandoned rail depot. The engine roared, tires spitting wet shale and rusted iron cinders as the heavy vehicle surged forward, clearly intending to pin Ava’s silver sedan—and both of us with it—against the rotting wooden wall of the freight depot.
"Get in your car! Move!" I roared, grabbing Ava by the upper arm and thrusting her toward the passenger side of my sedan.
"My phone! The video!" she cried, dropping to her knees in the freezing mud, frantically clawing through the gravel where her device had fallen.
The black SUV was less than thirty yards away, accelerating hard. The front steel push-bumper gleamed under the flickering sodium lights of the industrial yard.
I dove into the slush beside her, my fingers raking through the mud until they closed around the slick, cold casing of her phone. I dragged Ava to her feet by her coat collar with one violent heave, practically throwing her across the center console into the passenger seat of my sedan, and slammed the door shut.
I vaulted over the hood, scrambled into the driver’s seat, and fired the ignition. The engine screamed to life just as the black SUV crossed the final fifteen yards.
I threw the transmission into reverse, flooring the pedal. The rear tires spun wildly against the slick gravel, screaming in protest, before grabbing traction. The car surged backward in a violent arc just as the heavy steel bumper of the SUV tore through the exact empty air where my hood had been half a second earlier.
The SUV’s driver slammed on his brakes, the heavy vehicle skidding sideways on the wet mud, broadside to us.
Through the rain-streaked side window of the interceptor, illuminated by the dash lights, I caught a glimpse of the driver. It wasn't Sullivan—Sullivan was still at the hospital. The man behind the wheel was younger, thick-jawed, with narrow, feral eyes beneath a black tactical ballcap. On his shoulder was the patch of the Bessemer Police Department's special enforcement unit. It was the second officer from the hospital hallway—Sergeant Bell’s partner.
He had been sent here to clean up the witness.
The officer threw his driver's door open, stepping out into the pouring rain, reaching toward the retention holster on his right hip.
"Hold on!" I shouted to Ava.
Instead of trying to squeeze past him through the narrow gate, I shoved the gear selector into drive, cut the steering wheel hard to the left, and hammered the throttle. The sedan lunged forward, clipping the open driver-side door of the police SUV with a deafening metallic screech. The impact tore the SUV’s heavy door completely backward on its hinges with a sickening crunch of twisted steel.
The officer dove backward into the mud to avoid being crushed by his own buckling door.
I didn't wait for him to recover. I punched the accelerator, the car fishtailing wildly through the mud before tearing through the rusted gates of the rail depot and blowing out onto Nineteenth Street, spraying twin plumes of dirty rainwater across the pavement.
Ava was huddled in the passenger footwell, her knees pulled up to her chest, hyperventilating in sheer, paralyzing terror. "They're going to kill me," she sobbed, burying her face in her trembling hands. "They're going to kill me and make it look like an accident. That’s what they do here. If Judge Vance wants someone gone, they just disappear."
I kept my eyes glued to the rearview mirror. No headlights followed us out onto the main artery. The damaged door on the interceptor had bought us precious minutes, but we were operating on borrowed time. Bessemer was a small, insular jurisdiction; every patrol unit within five miles would be hunting my gray sedan within minutes if Bell's partner called it in over the radio.
"Listen to me, Ava," I said, my voice steady, sharp, and commanding as I navigated the backstreets away from the downtown core. "You are under the protection of the federal government now. I am a sworn officer of the Department of Justice. As long as you are with me, an attack on you is an attack on the United States. Do you understand?"
She slowly raised her tear-streaked face, her blonde hair plastered to her cheeks with cold rain. "You don't understand how deep this goes, Mr. Lennox. Judge Vance isn't just a judge. His family owns the development company that bought half the downtown properties during the urban renewal project twenty years ago. The police chief is his brother-in-law. Lieutenant Sullivan is his enforcer. If you take this to the local district attorney, they will laugh at you—and then they'll hand your father over to Sullivan."