Chương 9 - The Water
"It's a trap!" Celia screamed at the top of her lungs.
She turned to run, but her foot snagged on the metal floor grating of the van.
She crashed hard onto her knees, watching the red digital timer tick down to 00:05.
Through the open doors of the van, she saw Lorenzo snap the neck of the last corrupt cop.
He locked eyes with her and saw the glowing red explosives strapped to David’s chest.
Most men would have run in the opposite direction to save themselves.
Lorenzo did not hesitate.
He sprinted toward the van with terrifying speed, covering the distance in mere seconds.
He didn't try to disarm the bomb or pull David out.
Lorenzo grabbed Celia by the collar of her coat and threw her backward out of the van.
She hit the wet pavement just as Lorenzo dove out after her, wrapping his massive body entirely around hers.
The timer hit zero.
The explosion tore through the warehouse parking lot with apocalyptic force.
A massive shockwave of heat and shattered metal lifted them clean off the ground.
Celia felt the world turn into a blinding flash of orange fire before they were violently hurled backward.
They crashed through the rusted guardrail and plummeted off the concrete pier.
The freezing, black water of Lake Michigan swallowed them whole.
The impact forced the air from Celia's lungs, replacing it with burning cold liquid.
She thrashed in the darkness, disoriented and sinking fast.
A strong hand grabbed her hair and pulled her upward toward the faint glow of the surface fires.
They broke the surface, gasping violently for air amidst burning debris floating on the water.
Lorenzo dragged her toward a wooden piling beneath the pier, shielding her from the flames above.
Above them, Travis was yelling in triumph, assuming they had been incinerated in the blast.
"Did you get the book?" Travis yelled to someone on a radio.
"Yes," a voice crackled back from a secondary location. "And I have the sister."
Lorenzo held Celia against the wooden post, blood pouring from a cut above his gray eyes.
He pulled a waterproof GPS tracker from his pocket, coughing up lake water as he read the screen.
"I slipped a tracker into the spine of the fake ledger," Lorenzo rasped, his voice hoarse.
Celia clung to him, shivering so violently her teeth rattled.
"Where are they?" she begged, her vision blurring from the cold.
Lorenzo stared at the glowing green dot on the small screen, his expression morphing from pain to absolute horror.
"They are at 4410 South Racine," Lorenzo whispered, his voice trembling for the first time.
Celia wiped water from her eyes.
"What is that address?" she asked.
"It is my childhood home," Lorenzo replied, staring blankly at the screen.
"It is a secret bunker only my blood relatives know about."
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Lorenzo looked at Celia with a devastating realization dawning in his eyes.
"Travis doesn't work for the Morettis," Lorenzo said softly. "He works for someone in my own family."
