Chapter 9 - The Betrayal from Within
Blythe jumped to her feet, the woolen blanket pooling at her ankles.
“Dana?!” she gasped, her voice shrill with terror. “No, no, no! Dana has nothing to do with this!”
Soren held up a single finger, silencing her as he kept the phone pressed to his ear. His eyes had turned into twin chips of frozen granite.
“Where is Marko holding her?” Soren asked.
*“The abandoned rail yard off Maspeth Creek,”* the voice replied. *“He wants an exchange. He knows you brought Miss Carver upstate. He’s demanding you bring her to the freight warehouse by dawn, or he starts sending Dana back in pieces.”*
“Hold the perimeter at the perimeter road,” Soren ordered. “Do not engage until I arrive.”
He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the mantelpiece.
“Soren, please,” Blythe begged, tears of panic finally breaking through her defenses, spilling down her cheeks. “Dana is a nurse! She has a cat, she volunteers at the community clinic, she’s innocent! Please don't let them hurt her!”
Soren walked over to a heavy oak cabinet on the far side of the library. He placed his thumb against a hidden biometric scanner.
The wood clicked, swinging open to reveal an armory of tactical rifles, suppressors, and body armor.
“Marko was my second-in-command for five years,” Soren said, pulling out a fitted Kevlar vest and tossing it onto the table. “He orchestrated the gala shooting because he knew I would lock you down. His goal was never to kill me in the Carlyle—it was to isolate me from my network so he could seize the northern transit hubs with Volkov’s backing.”
He pulled on a black tactical vest, tightening the Velcro straps with crisp, brutal tugs.
“And taking Dana was his leverage,” Blythe said, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Her panic was rapidly hardening into something lethal. “He wants me.”
“He will not have you,” Soren said coldly.
“He *needs* to think he has me!” Blythe stepped directly into his path, blocking him from reaching for a combat rifle. “If you roll up to that rail yard with twenty armored cars and an army of mercenaries, Marko will shoot Dana through the head the second he hears an engine! You know he will!”
Soren looked down at her, his brow furrowed. “Blythe, this is not a hospital triage. This is an execution ground.”
“Then treat me like a partner, not a liability!” she demanded, her voice ringing with fierce authority. “Marko wants you to bring me. So bring me. Use me as the bait. Get me close enough to confirm Dana is alive, and let your men do the rest.”
Soren grabbed her upper arms, his grip tight, almost bruising.
“If a single round goes astray, you die,” he snarled, his composure finally breaking into raw, furious protective rage. “Do you understand that? In a firefight, Kevlar does not protect your throat, your face, your femoral artery! I will not watch you bleed out on a warehouse floor!”
“And I will not live in safety while my best friend dies for a photograph she didn't take!” Blythe yelled back, staring straight into his eyes without yielding an inch.
For five long seconds, they stood chest to chest, their breath mingling in the dim light of the library, the tension between them crackling like an exposed power line.
Slowly, Soren released her arms.
He reached into the cabinet, pulled out a lightweight Kevlar vest designed to be concealed under clothing, and laid it across her chest.
“Put this on,” he said, his voice dropping into a lethal, low growl. “And if I tell you to drop, you drop to the floor and do not move until I tell you the world is safe again.”
Thirty minutes later, three unmarked vehicles cut through the predawn darkness toward the industrial wasteland of Queens.
Blythe sat in the passenger seat of Soren’s SUV, wearing dark tactical pants, sturdy combat boots, and an oversized black jacket over her body armor. Her hair was pulled back tightly. Tucked into her waistband was the titanium folding knife Soren had given her in the stairwell.
She looked at her hands. They were steady.
When a patient coded on the trauma table, panic was a luxury that cost lives. This was no different. Dana was her patient; Marko was the infection.
They arrived at Maspeth Creek at 5:15 AM.
A dense fog rolled off the polluted water, swallowing the rusted shipping containers and abandoned freight train cars that littered the yard. In the center of the clearing sat a derelict locomotive repair shed, its corrugated iron walls streaked with rust.
The single halogen floodlight above the warehouse door buzzed with an irritating, high-pitched whine.
Soren parked forty yards from the entrance, cutting the headlights.
His phone buzzed. He put it on speaker.
*“Come inside, Soren,”* Marko’s voice sneered through the speaker. *“Alone. With the girl. If I see a single laser sight on these catwalks, your little nurse’s friend gets a third eye.”*
Soren looked at Blythe. He reached over, cupping the back of her head, his fingers burying into her hair.
He pulled her toward him until their foreheads touched.
“Stay two steps behind me,” he whispered against her skin. “Always.”
“I’m right behind you,” she replied.
They stepped out into the biting morning air.
The gravel crunched beneath their boots as they walked toward the open warehouse doors. Inside, the air smelled of stale grease, stagnant water, and fear.
In the center of the vast concrete floor, tied to a heavy steel chair beneath a single swinging incandescent bulb, was Dana.
Her face was bruised, her lip split, but her eyes went wide with sheer terror as she saw Blythe enter.
“Blythe! No! Run!” Dana screamed through the duct tape covering her mouth.
Stepping out from the shadows behind the chair was Marko—a tall, wiry man with greasy black hair and a sneering mouth, holding a customized assault rifle aimed directly at Dana’s chest.
Positioned on the catwalks above were four heavily armed men with rifles trained on Soren.
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“Welcome, boss,” Marko purred, clicking the safety off his rifle. “How nice of you to bring my retirement fund right to my door.”
***
