Chapter 129 -
The darkness lasted three seconds.
Then the emergency lighting kicked in, low and red, casting the warehouse in a half-glow that made everything look wrong, too vivid in some places and completely swallowed in others. Men shouted, boots hit concrete. The sound of the south tunnel exploding open, a deep metallic bang that reverberated through the floor and up through Nia's knees, as Leo's first extraction team came through.
Nia dropped to the floor instinctively, hands over her head for one second before her body remembered to move instead of just hide. Something hit the ground beside her, a piece of ceiling fixture, and she rolled away from it, pressing herself behind the nearest piece of cover, an old metal pallet rack that smelled like rust and oil.
The first shots came from the tunnel side. They came from Leo's men.
Santiago's men returned fire from the upper walkways, and the sound was enormous in the enclosed space, swallowing everything, making it hard to think in a straight line.
Nia looked for Isadora.
She was still bound to the chair. In the chaos, no one had gone for her yet because the men near her had moved toward the firefight. One guard still stood within ten feet of the chair, crouched, his back to Isadora and his weapon pointed at the tunnel.
Nia looked around her. The pallet rack had loose bolts along the bottom bar. She grabbed one, pulling it free, solid and heavy in her hand.
She moved low along the floor, fast and tight against the base of the rack, staying in the shadow the red light couldn't reach.
The guard never heard her. He was too focused on the muzzle flashes from the tunnel. She came up behind him and swung the bolt as hard as she could at the back of his skull. He dropped down, but he managed to grab the rack on the way down and pull her forward, but he went down instead.
She was already at Isadora before she had fully straightened.
"I've got you," she said.
"Nia," Isadora said, her voice tight and shaking. "Nia, untie me, please, please, just—"
"I'm doing it." The ties at the wrist were thick, and she didn't have a blade. She worked at the knot with both hands, her fingers slipping.
"Hurry," Isadora said.
"I'm hurrying."
More shots fired close. A man ran past them in the red dark, too close, and Nia threw herself over Isadora and the chair and they both held still.
He didn't stop. He was running away from the tunnel team, not toward them. Nia got back to the ties. One wrist came free, gven the other. Isadora grabbed her immediately, both arms around Nia's neck, her grip desperate and fierce.
"Okay," Nia said. She held her back just as hard, one second, two, no more than that. "Okay. I've got you. Can you walk?"
"Yes," Isadora said. She was already pulling herself upright, knees shaky but holding.
"We go for the east door," Nia said. "That's how I came in. Stay behind me and stay low."
"Okay," Isadora said. "Lead."
They moved.
The gunfire was still concentrated near the tunnel entrance and the east-side wall was marginally clearer for it, but every few seconds a figure cut through the red dark at speed and Nia had to judge in real time, from nothing but silhouette and direction, whether they were Leo's men or Santiago's. She got it right twice. The third time she pulled Isadora flat against a concrete pillar and held her breath and a man ran past them who was absolutely one of Santiago's, close enough that she could smell the sweat on him, and he didn't see them at all. He was too focused on the muzzle flashes near the tunnel stairs.
Twenty feet from the east door. Fifteen.
Nia pushed Isadora forward. "Go. Don't stop. Don't look back, just run."
"What about you?"
"I'm right behind you. Go."
Isadora ran.
And Santiago stepped out from behind a support column five feet to Nia's right.
He had a gun. He wasn't pointing it at her. He was pointing it at Isadora's back, tracking her as she ran toward the door.
"Call her back," he said.
Nia looked at the gun. At Isadora, ten feet from the door now.
"Call her back, Nia, or I put a bullet in her spine."
"She doesn't know anything," Nia said. "She's not a threat to you. Let her go."
"She's leverage," Santiago said. "She always was. That's all she is. That's all you are too, if we're being honest. Everybody in Leo's world is just something to use against him."
"She's almost out of range," Nia said.
"No, she isn't," Santiago said.
Isadora hit the door. It opened and went through.
Santiago adjusted his aim toward the door and Nia moved, not toward him, but sideways, putting herself between the door and his line of fire.
"Move," he said.
"No," she said.
He turned the gun on her directly.
"Then it's a different conversation," he said.
They stood in the red half-light with the firefight raging thirty feet behind them and the open door ahead of them. She could feel the cold air coming through it.
"Leo is in this building right now," she said.
"I know," Santiago said. "That was always the plan."
"You're not going to get out of here," she said.
"Probably not," he said. He didn't seem particularly bothered by this, and that was the thing about Santiago that scared her more than the gun. “But Leo isn't either. Not the way he wants to." He took one step toward her. "He gets to watch one more thing he loves die. And then I'm done. Everything I started is finished. That's all I ever really wanted."
He raised the gun level with her head. From the door behind her came Leo's voice.
"Put it down, Santiago."
Nia exhaled. Something loosened in her chest that had been locked since she walked through that door.
Leo was in the doorway. He wasn't supposed to be there. He was supposed to be one block east, outside, coordinating. Not inside. Not this close, not framed in the east doorway with the cold night air at his back like he had just walked through it deliberately, unhurried, like he had been heading here all along. He had his weapon out. His eyes found Nia first, one fast sweep of her face, checking, and then they moved to Santiago and stayed there.
Santiago looked at him and the gun didn't move from Nia's direction, but his whole body changed. Everything relaxed. Everything settled into place for him.
"There he is," he said softly. "The Enforcer himself." He took a breath. "Come in, Leonardo. Close the door. No one else needs to be in this room. Just you and me, the way it was always supposed to end."
Jordan stepped out of the dark behind Santiago. He had a knife, and his face was doing something Nia had never seen on it before.