Chapter 5 - The Convoy into the Storm
The heavy armored doors of the black Mercedes-Maybach S680 slammed shut with a pressurized, airtight thud that completely obliterated the howling fury of the Chicago storm outside.
The interior of the vehicle was an oasis of diamond-stitched charcoal leather, burled walnut, and the sterile hum of an independent filtration system. The twin turbochargers of the twelve-cylinder engine let out a deafening, metallic shriek as the vehicle vaulted off the curb of Michigan Avenue, accelerating through forty miles an hour in less than three seconds.
Behind them, two black Chevrolet Suburbans filled with six armed enforcers each fell into tight escort formation, their high-intensity strobe lights flashing red and blue through the black sheets of rain, blowing through every red light on State Street with absolute, terrifying impunity.
In the rear passenger compartment, Sophie sat pressed against the leather seat, her body anchored firmly against the vehicle’s acceleration.
She had stripped off her white apron, throwing it onto the floorboards. Her black waitress dress was wrinkled, damp with rain from the dash across the sidewalk, but her hands were entirely steady.
She had laid the baby across her lap, her left hand keeping the child’s head tilted backward to maintain the patency of her tiny trachea. With her right hand, Sophie had improvised an aspirator using a sterile plastic straw from the bar and a clean linen napkin, gently suctioning the bitter, milky residue from the infant’s mouth to prevent the chemical from entering the bronchial tubes.
Beside her sat Dominic Moretti.
He had stripped off his suit jacket, tossing it into the footwell. He sat in his black shirt, the sleeves rolled tightly past his elbows, his thick, tattooed forearms resting on his knees. In his right hand, he held a customized, matte-black Sig Sauer nine-millimeter; in his left, he held an encrypted satellite transponder pressed tight to his ear.
His gray eyes were pinned to Sophie’s hands.
"Speak to me, Carlin," Dominic commanded into the phone, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that made the windows hum.
On the other end of the line was Dr. Marcus Carlin—the head of trauma surgery at Northwestern, a man whose private medical license was owned entirely by the Moretti family trust.
"I have the trauma bay in the estate basement unlocked, Dominic," Carlin’s voice crackled through the secure speaker. "I have pediatric sodium thiosulfate drawn into two-milligram ampoules. I have the gastric lavage tubes. But Dominic... if the ingestion occurred more than thirty minutes ago, the metabolic acidosis will trigger myocardial infarction before the reversal agent crosses the membrane."
"The girl says she has thirty minutes," Dominic rasped.
"What girl?"
Dominic glanced sideways at Sophie.
He watched her slender fingers gently tap the infant’s tiny chest, counting the respirations with clinical, unhurried precision. She did not look at the guns. She did not look at the eighty-mile-an-hour speedometer on the dashboard. She looked only at the child.
"The only person in this city who knows what she’s doing," Dominic said into the phone. "Have the blood gases ready. If my daughter dies tonight, Carlin... you won't leave that basement."
He ended the call, tossing the satellite phone onto the leather console.
The Maybach took a violent, ninety-degree turn onto Lake Shore Drive, the tires screeching against the wet asphalt, the spray from the lake washing over the bulletproof windshield in a blinding wave of black water.
Sophie looked up from the baby.
Her dark brunette ponytail had come slightly undone, soft strands of hair framing her pale, determined face.
"What is her name?" Sophie asked.
The question was so quiet, so human, that it seemed to detonate the suffocating masculine violence inside the armored car.
Dominic’s breath hitched in his throat.
His large, scarred fingers twitched against the grip of his weapon. He turned his head slowly, looking at the tiny, cream-dressed bundle resting across the waitress’s black knees.
"Clara," Dominic whispered, the word tearing out of his throat like raw iron. "Her mother named her Clara before the hemorrhage took her."
Sophie’s hazel eyes softened by an imperceptible fraction. "She has your jaw, Mr. Moretti. She's stubborn. She's fighting the sedative."
Dominic looked at Sophie’s face—really looked at her—for the first time since she had walked into his booth at L’Aura.
"You're not a waitress," Dominic said.
"I served drinks to twelve of your lieutenants tonight, Mr. Moretti," she replied, her fingers continuing their gentle, rhythmic stimulation of Clara’s spine. "I know how to carry a tray."
"A waitress doesn't recognize cyanide on the breath of an infant," Dominic murmured, his gray eyes boring into hers with a terrifying, unreadable intensity. "A waitress doesn't command my enforcers to step back. Who are you, Sophie?"
Sophie looked out the tinted glass as the Maybach blew past the red lights of Division Street, the headlights illuminating the towering wrought-iron gates of the Moretti estate fifty yards ahead.
"My name is Sophie Vance," she said softly.
Dominic’s entire body went completely, terrifyingly rigid.
May you like
The name Vance hung inside the armored cabin like a live grenade with the pin pulled.
Before Dominic could speak—before the steel in his hand could rise—the Maybach crashed through the open iron gates of the Gold Coast estate, its tires screaming across the wet cobblestones of the private courtyard, sliding to a halt outside the reinforced doors of the private medical pavilion.
