Chapter 6 - RETALIATION
Z
The drive back from the country club was quiet, but the air felt heavy with impending violence.
Mason Vance was cornered, and a cornered predator with money and legal connections was more dangerous than a wild animal. He had too much to lose, and his ego had just taken a lethal blow in front of every power player in the state.
I parked my car in the hospital parking lot at 11:30 PM.
As I walked through the sliding glass doors into the lobby, I noticed immediately that the atmosphere had changed. The night shift nurse at the front desk was missing. The hallway lights were dimmed, flickering erratically.
Instinct, honed by combat deployments, screamed at me.
I reached beneath my dress, unsnapped the thumb-break on my holster, and drew the Beretta M9. I held it low against my leg as I took the stairs two at a time, bypassing the elevator.
When I pushed open the heavy door to the third floor, my heart stopped.
The deputy who had been posted outside my mother's room was slumped in a chair, unconscious, a dark line of blood running down his temple.
The door to Room 314 was slightly ajar.
I moved silently down the hallway, pressing my back against the wall next to the doorframe. I took a deep breath, regulating my heart rate, forcing my mind into a state of absolute, tactical clarity.
Inside, I heard a harsh, unfamiliar voice.
"Just keep her quiet until Mason calls. If the Colonel wants to play hardball with the feds, she can watch her old lady take a final nap."
There were two of them. I could hear the rustle of heavy jackets and the metallic click of a weapon being readied.
I didn't wait.
I kicked the door open with all the force in my body. The heavy wooden door slammed into the first man, sending him crashing backward over a medical cart, spilling trays of syringes and IV bags across the floor.
The second man turned, raising a suppressed pistol toward the bed.
I fired once.
The 9mm round caught him cleanly in the shoulder, the force of the impact spinning him around and knocking his gun from his grip. He hit the wall with a groan, clutching his bleeding arm.
The first man scrambled to his feet, pulling a combat knife from his belt, his eyes wide with desperate rage. He lunged at me, slashing wildly.
I sidestepped the blade, grabbed his wrist, and drove my knee hard into his ribs. The sound of cracking bone filled the small room. I twisted his arm behind his back, slammed his chest against the wall, and applied pressure to his carotid artery until his body went limp and he slid to the floor.
"Nicole?"
My mother's voice came from the bed, small and trembling. She was sitting up, clutching her blanket to her chest, her eyes wide with shock as she looked at the two unconscious men on the floor and the gun in my hand.
"It's over, Mom," I said, my voice trembling slightly as the adrenaline began to clear my system. I quickly checked her vitals—her pulse was fast, but she was unhurt. "They're not going to hurt you anymore."
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"What have you done?" she whispered, looking at the blood on the floor. "Nicole... what is happening?"
"The truth is coming out," I said, holstering my pistol and picking up the phone from the bedside table to call the FBI field director I had spoken with earlier. "And the people who did this are going to spend the rest of their lives behind bars."
