Chapter 233 Bob Holds The Final Line

Chapter 233 Bob Holds The Final Line
The heavy brass deadbolts clicked into the striker plates. Sebastian secured the double doors of my corner office. He turned away from the wood.

The emergency lights sat dead. The Wolfe skyscraper plunged into pitch-black darkness. The ambient glow of the city grid outside the floor-to-ceiling windows cast weak, gray shadows across the plush carpet.

Sebastian pulled the charging handle of his combat pistol. A round chambered with a sharp metallic snap.

"Stay behind the desk," Sebastian commanded. His deep voice filled the dark space. "Do not open these doors. I do not care what you hear in the hallway."

He planned to step back out. He planned to hunt.

I reached into the bottom drawer of my desk. My fingers bypassed the files and found the heavy plastic casing of the emergency security tablet. I pulled the device out and set it on the dark wood.

"I am not sitting in the dark waiting for a knock," I stated.

I pressed the power button. The screen illuminated my face with a pale, green glow. The main power grid lacked a heartbeat, but the closed-circuit cameras operated on an isolated battery system. The lenses utilized infrared technology.

The seventy floors of the corporate tower flickered to life on my screen. The glass lobbies and the luxury corridors appeared in sharp, monochromatic green contrast.

"The cameras run," I told him. "I see the stairwells."

Sebastian walked to the desk. He leaned over my shoulder. He stared at the screen. We watched a dozen men in heavy tactical gear push past the ruined reception desk in the ground-floor lobby. They carried high-capacity rifles. They wore thick Kevlar vests. They lacked night-vision optics. They swung heavy flashlights. The bright white beams sliced through the dark feeds, giving away their exact positions.

Victor Salazar stood in the center of the lobby. His face looked like a swollen, purple mask. The jaw we shattered in the basement sat wired shut. He pointed his hand toward the east stairwell.

"They split into two teams," Sebastian diagnosed their movement. "Six men take the east stairs. Six men take the west. They intend to sweep the floors."

Sebastian stepped away from the desk. He pulled a black radio from his belt. He adjusted the earpiece.

"Bob," Sebastian spoke into the microphone. "Take two enforcers. Hold the choke point at floor sixty. Let no one pass the executive threshold."

"Copy," Bob replied over the static.

Sebastian looked at me. The pale green light from the tablet reflected in his gray eyes. The tension between us felt thick and primal. We stripped the legal cages away hours ago. We claimed each other in the master suite. The man standing in front of me belonged to me, and he prepared to bleed for our survival.

He reached across the desk. His calloused hand cupped my jaw. His thumb brushed my lower lip.

"Guide me," he said.

"I will," I promised.

He dropped his hand. He walked to the concealed panel in the wall. The electronic lock failed with the power grid, but he triggered the manual release lever. The hidden door slid open. He stepped into the service corridor. The panel slid shut behind him.

I sat alone in the dark office.

I plugged a headset into the tablet. I slipped the earpiece into my right ear and adjusted the microphone near my mouth.

I tapped the screen. I tracked Sebastian.

He emerged from the service corridor on floor forty. He wore the night-vision optics retrieved from the armory. The gear strapped to his head gave him a mechanical, lethal silhouette. He moved without a sound. He did not use a flashlight. He became a shadow in a building made of glass and steel.

I split the tablet screen. The left side displayed the east stairwell. The right side displayed the west.

The mercenaries climbed. They blew the reinforced doors with small, shaped charges. The muffled thuds vibrated up the steel skeleton of the skyscraper. They reached floor thirty-five.

"West stairwell," I spoke into the microphone. "Three men emerging on floor thirty-eight. They are sweeping the marketing department."

"I am on thirty-nine," Sebastian replied. The radio carried the sound of his steady, measured breathing. "I will take the internal maintenance stairs down."

I watched the screen. The three mercenaries kicked open the glass doors of the marketing department. Their flashlight beams bounced off the slick white desks and the blank computer monitors. They moved in a tight formation. They swept the corners.

Sebastian dropped from the ceiling access panel behind them.

He landed in a crouch. He raised his handgun.

The infrared camera captured the bright, soundless flashes of his weapon. Three rapid bursts of light.

The three mercenaries collapsed onto the carpet. Their flashlights rolled across the floor, casting erratic shadows against the walls. They did not twitch.

"Clear," Sebastian grated over the radio.

"East stairwell," I called the next target. "Four men. Floor forty-two. They bypassed the accounting offices. They push straight for the central elevators to pry the shafts open."

"Routing through the service vents," Sebastian responded.

I monitored his green silhouette. He moved with a brutal, terrifying efficiency. He navigated the corporate environment like a predator in a familiar jungle.

He reached the forty-second floor. He slipped behind a massive marble pillar near the elevator banks.

The four mercenaries approached. They carried crowbars and heavy canvas bags. They aimed their rifles down the long, dark corridor.

Sebastian stepped out from the pillar. He did not fire from a distance. He closed the gap.

He grabbed the barrel of the lead mercenary’s rifle. He shoved the weapon upward. He drove his combat knife under the edge of the man’s Kevlar vest. The mercenary dropped.

The remaining three men panicked. They fired blind into the dark. The muzzle flashes illuminated the hallway in chaotic, staccato bursts. The noise over the radio deafened me.

"Sebastian!" I yelled.

A bullet shattered the glass wall of the adjacent boardroom. Shards rained down on the carpet.

Sebastian dropped to a knee. He fired two shots. The second and third mercenaries hit the ground.