The trap springs in a screech of metal as the loading door slams down behind us. Lights snap off, emergency floor strips glowing blood-red.
Muzzle flashes strobe from the mezzanine. Bullets ping off pallet racks, shredding shrink wrap and powder detergent. I shove Dmitri behind a tower of bleach jugs, returning fire upward in measured bursts to keep their heads down.
“Four shooters,” Dmitri calls over the ricochet whine. “Two high, two low.”
“Copy.” I shoot out a hanging work light and glass rains down, giving us more shadow.
Dmitri crawls under the forklift chassis, popping up on the other side. Two quick cracks from his pistol and one ground-level hitter folds, crimson blooming against white plastic drums. I switch to the catwalk, line up a silhouette framed in a red glow, and double-tap center mass. The body topples through the rail, slamming onto cardboard below.
A pump-action roars from my blind side. Dmitri intercepts, wrenching the shotgun upward, the blast punching the ceiling tiles. He buries a knife in the shooter’s kidney, jerk-twists, and drops him.
That leaves one—their overwatch on the catwalk. I sprint up the side stairs, boots hammering steel. The shooter swings his sub gun and rounds tear into the guardrail. One clips my vest, bruising ribs. Pain spreads, but I drive into him, shoulder first, both of us slamming against the railing. The gun skitters away.
Up close I notice the twin wolf tattoo curling up his neck. I pause. Where the hell have I seen such a mark before? Recognition flares white-hot.The gala. This mark was on one of the assassins.
I slam the man’s wrist into the rail until bone cracks and yank off his balaclava.
“Who paid you?” I snarl.
He spits blood. “None of your goddamn business.” His accent is Baltic. He sneers at me. Then he makes a mistake. He goes for a knife at his heel.
I snap his wrist. He tries to curse, but I squeeze the trigger. The shot is muffled in the cavernous dark.
Silence settles, broken only by distant drips coming through the roof. Dmitri drags bodies to one corner and checks pulses, but they’re all dead. He radios cleanup. “Black-bag team, four specials,” followed by the address.
Dmitri notes my shredded vest edge. “You’re hit?”
“Just a scratch.” I grin. The bruise is already blooming, but bone is intact. I take photos of the wolf tattoo, along with the shell casings with distinctive green primer.
Baltic supplier. Volkov’s favorite.
Evidence.
“What about Gambini?” Dmitri asks, scanning the area for more surprises.
“Either he sold us out or got scared off.” I pocket the burner. “Either way, deal’s dead. Burn his operations, transfer the DOT license to our own LLC. He wants to take it up in court, let him try. Otherwise, I’m considering this payment for trying to have me killed.”
Dmitri nods. We holster our weapons and step out to the dock. Cleanup rolls in with clinical precision—three vans, no logos, men in charcoal coveralls moving like a pit crew from hell. They lay plastic runners, photograph every shell casing, then start sealing bodies in black plastic cocoons. A portable pump hisses, vacuuming bleach and blood into steel drums labeled “Industrial Solvent.” In twenty minutes the place will look like nothing happened but a pallet spill.
Dmitri stands beside me on the loading dock, sleet peppering his shoulders. “That wolf tattoo and the Baltic ammo. All roads point to Aleksander.”
“It’s looking that way. But then again, this could be bigger than one grieving psychopath.”
The coverall team wheels the last body past us, an antiseptic odor trailing behind. A tech snaps the overhead door back up, letting dawn light spill across the cleaned floor, the scent of bleach now the only proof of disturbance.
“I could kill him,” I say to the air.
“Severing ties won’t be simple,” Dmitri says. “Kill Volkov outright and every mid-level client starts wondering if we’ll turn on them, too.”
“Not to mention that I don’t know for sure if it’s him behind this bullshit.”
“You start assassinating, you start making people nervous. Not?—”
“Good for business,” I finish. Dmitri chuckles.
I grind my heel on salt dust. “All the same, we need to know what the hell is going on, find out who just tried to have us killed. Might be Volkov, might not.” I nod toward the van door closing on the wrapped up bodies. “But we need hard evidence—financial trails, message logs, anything that shows Volkov’s behind this.”
Dmitri watches the vans pull away, taillights blinking through fog. “So we dig. Follow the money, follow the guns, follow everything.”
