Chapter 7 - Fractured Allegiances
The conference room went dead silent. Outside, the steady hum of air conditioning units felt oppressive. Mateo slowly rested his right hand on the retention strap of his sidearm holster, his eyes locked onto Detective Frank Vance.
"Care to explain this, Frank?" Mateo asked, his tone dropping to a dangerous whisper.
Vance stared at the faded glossy print. The photograph showed three young men in desert camouflage standing before a burning armored vehicle: Cole, Vance, and a third man whose face had been deliberately scratched out with a razor blade.
"Cole was my squad leader in Kandahar," Vance said slowly, never raising his eyes. "The man with the scratched-out face was Jack Miller—Elena and Brad’s father. We weren't just soldiers, Mateo. We were the security detachment for the research firm developing Eidolon. When the lab was shelled, Jack stole the master culture. He thought he could sell it to the highest bidder to buy his family a way out of the country."
"And you?" Mateo barked. "Where do you fit in this slaughterhouse?"
"I joined the department to bury my past!" Vance snapped, his composure cracking. "I didn't know Cole was operating the lab out on Old Quarry Road until two days ago! Jack contacted me last week, desperate. He told me Cole had tracked his wife down and locked her in the basement to harvest the newborn's cord blood. Jack asked me for safe passage."
"Where is Jack now?"
Before Vance could answer, the glass windows of the precinct briefing room shattered inward under a hail of heavy automatic gunfire.
Mateo threw his body over Elena, dragging her down behind the heavy steel filing cabinets as bullet rounds chewed through the drywall and erupted computer monitors into sparks and flying plastic. Screams and return fire echoed from the bull pen outside. Smoke grenades bounced through the broken windows, hissing white, blinding plumes of phosphorus tear gas.
Through the suffocating fog, a distorted voice boomed through an exterior megaphone: "Detective Vance! Deliver the girl and the package coordinates in three minutes, or we detonate the precinct's gas mains!"
May you like
Mateo looked across the floor. Vance was on his belly, blood seeping from a shrapnel cut across his forehead, his service weapon drawn. But in Vance's left hand was a detonator switch Mateo had never seen before.
---
