Chapter 6 - The Riverdale Industrial Park
Word count: 1045
The afternoon sun beat down relentlessly on the corrugated metal roofs of the Riverdale Industrial Park as my truck bounced over the cracked asphalt of the deserted access road. The area was a labyrinth of decaying warehouses, overgrown weeds, and rusted shipping containers that cast long, distorted shadows across the desolate landscape. It was a place where people went when they wanted to disappear—or when they wanted to hide things the world was never supposed to see.
I parked the truck behind a row of rusted steel containers near loading bay 10, killing the engine instantly. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the distant, rhythmic grinding of a barge moving down the Cumberland River a quarter-mile away.
“Stay close behind me,” I whispered to Amy, sliding the tactical radio from my belt and clipping it securely to my jacket pocket.
We slipped out of the passenger side and hugged the shadow of the brick retaining wall. The air here smelled of damp concrete, stagnant river water, and the faint, unmistakable odor of burning gasoline.
My stomach tightened. Burning gasoline.
“He’s already here,” I muttered under my breath. “And he’s destroying the evidence.”
We crept down the narrow alleyway between Building 14 and an adjacent storage shed. As we rounded the corner toward loading bay 14-B, the evidence of Mason’s panic became glaringly obvious. A dark gray Ford F-150 was parked haphazardly right across the loading ramp, its driver-side door swinging wide open, the engine ticking as it cooled down in the humid air. The heavy metal rolling door of the warehouse was jammed halfway open, revealing a sliver of flickering amber light from inside.
I signaled for Amy to stay behind the corner of a concrete pillar, then crouched low and crept toward the semi-open rolling door.
Peering inside, the scene was pure chaos.
Warehouse 14-B was massive, its high vaulted ceiling lost in darkness. But the floor near the center was lit by the harsh glare of a portable halogen work light. Piles of manila folders, ledgers, and financial records were scattered haphazardly across a makeshift wooden table. Next to them sat three heavy duffel bags unzipped and overflowing with bundled stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
And standing right in the middle of it all, frantically tossing crumpled documents into a galvanized steel barrel and dousing them with a red plastic fuel can, was my cousin Mason.
He looked frantic, his hair disheveled, his expensive designer shirt stained with sweat and soot. He kept glancing nervously toward the front entrance, muttering curses under his breath as he struck a disposable plastic lighter and tossed it toward the barrel.
Fwoosh!
Flames erupted instantly from the barrel, licking hungrily toward the high wooden rafters of the warehouse.
“You stupid, arrogant bint,” Mason muttered angrily to himself, kicking a stack of legal files toward the fire. “Should’ve cleaned this out a month ago...”
I didn't wait another second. I stepped under the heavy rolling door, my boots hitting the concrete floor with a sharp, echoing slap that cut through the crackle of the fire.
“It’s over, Mason,” I called out, my voice ringing with cold authority through the vast, empty space.
Mason froze mid-motion, the red fuel can slipping from his fingers and clattering against the concrete. He whipped around, his eyes wide with shock and sudden, primal panic. When he saw it was just me—and not an entire squad of police officers—the terror in his eyes quickly morphed into a vicious, snarling sneer.
“Connor,” Mason hissed, wiping a smear of soot from his forehead with the back of his hand. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you? You had your house. You had your wife. Why couldn’t you just mind your own damn business and keep building bridges?”
“You and my mother tried to steal my life, Mason,” I said, walking slowly toward him, keeping my hands visible but ready for anything. “You forged documents, you stole my father’s estate, and you nearly destroyed my family. And right now, you’re committing federal arson to cover your tracks.”
Mason let out a harsh, barking laugh, taking a step backward toward the wooden table where the duffel bags of cash sat open. His hand dipped casually behind his back, resting near the waistband of his trousers.
“Your mother built this family, Connor!” Mason yelled, his voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls. “You think you earned that engineering degree? You think you bought this life on your own? Every dime you ever made passed through her hands first! We owned you before you even knew how to spell your own name!”
“Is that what she told you?” I asked, closing the distance between us. “That she owned us?”
“She owns everything!” Mason screamed, suddenly drawing his hand out from behind his back.
He wasn't holding a file. He was holding a heavy, snub-nosed .38 revolver, its dark steel barrel gleaming menacingly in the halogen light.
My instincts, honed by years on dangerous construction sites and split-second crisis management, kicked in instantly. But before I could lunge forward, a shadow slipped past me from the darkness near the entrance.
It was Amy.
She hadn't stayed behind the concrete pillar. She had followed me right through the rolling door, holding a heavy iron pipe she had picked up from the debris near the loading bay.
Before Mason could level the revolver at my chest, Amy swung the heavy pipe with the absolute, unyielding fury of a mother who had spent the last twenty-four hours pushed past the absolute brink of human endurance.
Clang!
The iron pipe struck the side of Mason’s wrist with bone-jarring force. The revolver flew out of his hand, spinning across the concrete floor and sliding into the darkness beneath a stack of wooden pallets.
Mason let out a piercing shriek of pain, clutching his fractured wrist to his chest and stumbling backward until he collided heavily with the wooden table, sending the duffel bags of cash spilling across the burning floor.
Before he could recover his balance, I closed the remaining distance, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and slammed him hard against the side of the metal storage rack.
“It’s over, Mason,” I breathed, my face inches from his, my fists clenched so tightly my bones ached. “The game is finished.”
Outside, the sharp, wailing sirens of multiple police cruisers suddenly tore through the silence of the industrial park, their flashing red and blue lights painting the corrugated walls of Warehouse 14-B in a brilliant, inescapable glow.
Sergeant Miller’s voice crackled loudly over the tactical radio clipped to my jacket: “Bradley, we’ve secured the perimeter. Nobody is leaving this building alive or dead.”
May you like
I looked down at Mason, who was gasping for air against the metal rack, his face pale with defeat. Then I turned and looked toward the entrance, where Amy was standing tall, breathing heavily, her eyes fixed on the flames of the burning barrel as they slowly began to die down.
We had survived the ambush. We had reclaimed our ground. But as I looked at the scattered files of financial destruction across the floor, I knew this was only the beginning of the real war.
