Chapter 13 - Crossfire in the Dark
The deafening pop of silenced gunfire shattered the night air, sending glass raining down onto the backseats like jagged diamonds. Sarah screamed, throwing her arms over her head as she slammed the car into reverse, burning rubber against the gravel lot in a desperate attempt to clear the spotlight's glare.
"Hold on!" Marcus yelled, gripping the dashboard with both hands as the car fishtailed violently around a rusted boxcar. Bullets pinged off the metal body of the sedan with terrifying regularity, leaving neat, black puncture marks along the driver's side door.
Caleb scrambled up from the gravel, sprinting alongside the moving vehicle before yanking open the rear passenger door and diving headfirst onto the floorboards. "Step on it, Sarah! They aren't trying to arrest us—they're cleaning up loose ends!"
Sarah didn't need to be told twice. She floored the accelerator, cutting the headlights entirely and relying solely on muscle memory and the faint moonlight reflecting off the rails to navigate the labyrinth of abandoned shipping containers. The truck pursuing them roared behind them, its massive halogen high beams sweeping wildly across the rusted steel walls, missing the fleeing sedan by mere inches.
In the back seat, Marcus turned around, his heart pounding in his throat, looking at his uncle with a mix of fury and terror. "Who are they? If the feds didn't send them, who the hell is shooting at us?"
Caleb wiped a streak of dirt and dried blood from his jaw, breathing heavily. "The syndicate's internal security team. They figured out that the flash drive wasn't destroyed fifteen years ago—that your father kept a master backup as insurance, and they think you kids have it now."
Sarah swung the steering wheel hard to the left, tearing out of the rail yard’s main rusted gate and launching the car onto the paved highway shoulder, leaving their pursuers choking on a thick cloud of dust behind them. The engine of the sedan sputtered ominously, groaning under the strain of the high-speed escape, but they were finally out in the open road.
"We can't go home," Sarah said, her voice trembling violently as she checked the rearview mirror to ensure they weren't still being followed. "The house will be watched. Where do we go?"
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Caleb sat up slowly from the floorboards, pulling a small, encrypted burner phone from his pocket and tapping the screen twice. "We go to the one place the syndicate never audited: your father’s old safety deposit box at the downtown transit station. And we bring the flash drive with us."
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