Chapter 8 - The Drop Point
I stole an unmarked military vehicle from the motor pool and sped into the rainy night.
The old shipyard was abandoned, full of rusting shipping containers and broken streetlights.
I parked a block away and moved silently through the shadows, my service weapon drawn and ready.
I found Mark tied to a chair inside a damp, empty warehouse.
Ryan and Linda were standing near him, holding suppressed pistols.
"She isn't coming," Ryan muttered, looking at his watch.
"She will come," Linda replied, her voice completely devoid of the maternal warmth she once faked.
"She is a soldier, and soldiers never leave a man behind."
I stepped out from behind a stack of wooden crates, holding the red hard drive up in the air.
"Let him go," I demanded, keeping my weapon aimed squarely at Ryan's chest.
Ryan smiled and took a step toward me.
"Throw the drive over here, sweetheart," he mocked.
"You resign tomorrow, you take the blame for the offshore accounts, and maybe we let the lawyer live."
I slowly lowered the drive, calculating the distance between us.
Suddenly, a gunshot echoed through the cavernous warehouse.
It was not my gun that fired.
Ryan gasped, dropping his weapon as he fell to his knees, clutching a massive wound in his chest.
I stared in shock as Linda lowered her smoking pistol.
She stepped over Ryan's bleeding body and looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"He was getting sloppy and emotional," Linda said calmly.
May you like
"I am not his mother, Colonel."
"I am his handler, and I am the one taking that drive."
