Chapter 30 Chapter 30 – BLIND SIDE

Chapter 30 Chapter 30 – BLIND SIDE
QUINN’S POV

I hated the silence of the mountains. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a fresh snowfall in Northfield; it was a heavy, suffocating pressure that made my ears ring. I was sitting in a rented SUV parked half a mile down the road from the Volkov Institute, the engine dead to avoid thermal detection. My laptop was perched on the steering wheel, the screen a grid of flickering security feeds and code that Detective Miller was bypassing from five thousand miles away.

Reid was inside. My best friend, the guy who used to worry about nothing more than his shot accuracy and his hair, was currently a shadow moving through a high-tech fortress. And I was the one who had to make sure he didn't end up in a Swiss prison or worse.

"Talk to me, Miller," I whispered into my headset. "He’s been dark for three minutes. He should have hit the server room by now."

"He’s in the ventilation shaft above the office," Miller’s voice crackled through the earpiece. "The security grid is cycling every sixty seconds. I’ve looped the hallway cameras, but the office itself is on a closed circuit. Once he drops in, he’s on his own."

I watched the red dot on my GPS—the tracker I’d sewn into the lining of Reid’s jacket. It was stationary.

"Reid, if you can hear me, the back-up generator is on the west side of the floor," I muttered, knowing he couldn't reply. "If things go south, hit the manual override. It’ll kill the electronic locks for ten seconds."

Suddenly, the red dot moved. It didn't just move; it surged.

"He’s down," Miller said, his voice tightening. "He’s at the terminal. I’m seeing a massive data transfer. Quinn, he’s not just deleting. He’s broadcasting."

"Broadcasting what?"

"Everything. The haptic logs, the biometric data, the private recordings. He’s sending it to every major sports news outlet and the Swiss Olympic Committee. He’s burning the whole house down."

I felt a grin tug at the corner of my mouth. That was the Reid Carter I knew. He didn't just want to hide the truth; he wanted to weaponize it. But the grin vanished when the security feed on my laptop suddenly went to static.

"Miller! What happened?"

"Counter-measure," Miller swore. "Volkov’s security team just realized the server is being tapped. They’ve cut the hardline. They’re moving toward the office, Quinn. Three men, armed. You have to get him out of there."

I didn't think. I threw the SUV into gear and roared out of the shadows, the tires screaming against the frozen pavement. I didn't care about stealth anymore. I hit the high beams, the light cutting through the alpine mist like a blade.

"Reid, get out of there!" I yelled into the comms, even though I knew the jammer was likely active.

I reached the gates of the Institute. The iron bars were locked tight. I didn't slow down. This was a heavy-duty rental with a reinforced bumper, and I was a guy who spent half his life hitting people into boards. I floored it.

The impact was a bone-jarring crunch of metal and sparks. The gate groaned, the hinges snapping under the weight of the SUV, and I plowed through, fishtailing onto the marble driveway.

I skidded to a stop in front of the glass main entrance. I grabbed the heavy crowbar from the passenger seat and jumped out. The alarms were blaring now, a piercing, rhythmic scream that echoed off the granite walls.

I saw him.

Reid burst through the glass doors of the side entrance, clutching a black hard drive to his chest. Behind him, three men in tactical gear were closing the gap. One of them had a hand on his holster.

"REID! HERE!" I roared.

Reid didn't hesitate. He dived for the SUV just as the first shot rang out—a sharp, terrifying crack that shattered the rear window of the car. He tumbled into the passenger seat, his face covered in sweat and glass dust.

"Go! Quinn, go!" he yelled.

I slammed the car into reverse, the tires spinning on the slick marble before catching grip. I spun the wheel, the back end of the SUV clipping a decorative stone pillar as we hurtled toward the broken gates.

"Did you get it?" I shouted over the sound of the wind whistling through the broken windows.

Reid held up the hard drive. His knuckles were bleeding, and his eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, but he was grinning. It was a jagged, manic look.

"It’s gone, Quinn. The server, the backups, the cloud... I wiped his master keys and sent the evidence to the world. Nikolai Volkov is officially a ghost."

I looked in the rearview mirror. The security teams were scrambling for their own vehicles, but they were too late. We were already hitting the main road, the darkness of the mountain swallowing us.

"You're a maniac, you know that?" I said, my heart finally starting to slow down.

"Yeah," Reid breathed, leaning his head back against the seat and closing his eyes. "But I'm a maniac with a fiancée who’s going to be very proud of me."

I looked at my best friend, the Golden Boy who had turned into a vigilante in the middle of the Alps. We were miles from safety, the Swiss police were probably already on the move, and we had just declared war on one of the most powerful men in sports.

"We need to get to the clinic," Reid said, his voice dropping into that quiet, intense tone. "We need to get Iris. We aren't staying another hour in this country."

"I've already got the flight path cleared," I said, pushing the SUV to its limit. "Miller’s got a private hanger waiting in Geneva. We just have to get there."

The road ahead was a winding ribbon of black ice and uncertainty, but as I looked at the drive in Reid’s hand, I knew the game had changed. The Ice and Fire contract was a memory. The Volkov Institute was a funeral pyre. And for the first time, we were the ones writing the final chapter.