Chapter 4 - The Predator’s Return
I didn’t use sirens. In a blizzard, flashing red and blue lights only announce your arrival to an entrenched sniper or an ambush team. I pushed the supercharged engine of my truck to its mechanical limits, sliding across the glazed ice of the four-lane boulevard until the brick façade of St. Jude’s Children’s Wing loomed out of the fog.
The fourth floor was pitch black.
The emergency generators hadn't kicked in because the breaker panel in the basement had been manually sabotaged with expanding foam and industrial shears. As I sprinted through the double doors of the pediatric ward, the scent of fresh copper hit me again.
Two county deputies were slumped against the nurses' station, unconscious from blunt force trauma, their service belts emptied.
I drew my sidearm, moving with silent, calculated strides along the linoleum. Outside Room 412, Marcus was kneeling behind an overturned metal gurney, blood dripping from a gash over his temple, his sidearm trained on the service elevator.
“Marcus,” I whispered.
“Alex... three men,” Marcus wheezed, adjusting his grip. “Contractors. Not local thugs. They used military-grade flashbangs in the south stairwell. Mercer was with them. They took Clara.”
The world narrowed to a pinpoint of burning white fire. “Where?”
“Roof,” Marcus said, coughing. “Mercer has a medevac chopper registered to his private surgical practice. He called in an emergency transfer claiming Clara suffered acute compartment syndrome from the brace.”
I didn't wait for Miller or the backup units. I bounded up the concrete stairwell four steps at a time, each breath burning my throat like swallowed glass. My daughter was up there in freezing temperatures, her spine fragile, her small body bruised from hours inside a padlocked shell.
When I kicked open the heavy fire door to the roof, the rotor wash of a twin-engine Bell 429 helicopter struck me like a wall of freezing thunder.
Snow whipped through the blinding glare of the chopper’s searchlight. Standing near the skids was Dr. Julian Mercer, dressed in a charcoal cashmere coat, holding a heavy ballistic case.
And standing near the edge of the helipad, clutching Clara by the collar of her hospital gown, was Victoria.
Clara’s bare feet dangled an inch above the icy gravel. The wind ripped through her hair, her small frame shivering violently, yet her eyes remained fixed on me. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She had spent ten years learning fortitude from a father who lived through hell, and she was refusing to break.
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“Put the gun down, Alex!” Victoria shrieked over the howling turbine. She pulled my stolen Sig Sauer from her coat pocket, pressing the cold barrel directly against Clara’s temple. “Drop it, or I let her fall four stories onto the concrete!”
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