Chapter 5 - The Standoff on the 40th Floor
The hallway was frozen in an agony of tension.
Detective Miller held his gun steady, aimed directly at Cruz's exposed right eye, but Sterling's shaking head blocked sixty percent of the target window. A single missed shot would kill the CEO—or give Cruz the millisecond he needed to press the trigger in his left hand.
"Take it easy, Cruz," Miller said, his voice dangerously calm, stepping forward an inch. "You're forty stories up. The building perimeter is completely surrounded by tactical units. There is nowhere for you to go."
Cruz let out a harsh, rasping laugh. "I don't need to go anywhere, cop. This box in my hand is slaved to four charges of C4 placed in the main electrical riser of this tower. You step any closer, and we all take a very fast ride down to the basement."
Behind the concrete pillar, Richard felt a cold sweat cover his skin.
Sterling looked past Miller’s shoulder, his eyes locking onto Richard, who was standing just behind the detective.
"Richard..." Sterling sobbed, tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks into his manicured beard. "Richard, tell them to put their guns down! Please! I didn't want it to come to this!"
Richard stepped out from behind the pillar, his eyes blazing with righteous fury. "You tried to murder my family, Victor! You put an explosive under my boat! My eight-year-old son was on that deck!"
"It was business, Richard!" Sterling shrieked, his composure completely shattering under the threat of death. "The merger! The merger was going to expose the forty million dollars I transferred out of the employee pension fund into the Cayman accounts over the last ten years! Once your auditors reviewed the shipping manifests, I was going to federal prison for the rest of my life!"
The truth was finally out in the open, recorded by the hall's security cameras and overheard by four police officers.
It wasn't a cartel war. It wasn't his cousin David. It was a desperate, greedy old man trying to vaporize the one executive whose honesty threatened to expose his life of corporate theft.
"You used a child's home as your execution ground," Richard said, pointing at Luna, who stood silently beside him. "You put Cruz on my dock."
Cruz glanced down at Luna, his dark eyes flinching slightly as he recognized the barefoot girl from the ice shed. A cruel, contemptuous sneer touched his lips.
"I should have snapped your little neck when I had the chance, kid," Cruz growled at her.
Luna didn't back down. She didn't hide behind Richard.
Instead, she did something that caught everyone—including Cruz—completely off guard.
She took three steps forward into the open hallway, her small, thin body standing right beside Detective Miller.
"You left your blue grease rag behind the ice shed," Luna said, her voice piercingly clear in the silent hall.
Cruz blinked, his focus wavering for a fraction of a second. "What?"
"The blue grease rag," Luna repeated, pointing her finger at his waist. "The one you used to wipe the oil off your black box. I found it. I gave it to the police. It has your thumbprints on it."
It was a complete, brilliant lie.
She had made it up on the spot, drawing from the street instincts her security-guard father had taught her about how criminals react when they think they've made a mistake.
The lie worked.
For a split second, Cruz’s eyes flicked downward toward his belt pocket, his brain trying to remember if he had dropped a rag at the dock.
That split second was all Detective Miller needed.
BANG!
Miller’s service weapon fired with a deafening roar.
The hollow-point bullet struck Cruz directly in the shoulder blade, the force of the impact snapping his body backward and tearing his grip away from Victor Sterling.
Sterling collapsed to the marble floor, screaming in terror.
Cruz stumbled back against the boardroom doorframe, blood spurting from his shoulder, his left hand frantically trying to thumb the red toggle switch on the black box.
Richard didn't wait for Miller to fire a second time.
With a roar of pure protective instinct, Richard charged across the ten feet of marble floor like a linebacker, throwing his entire body weight into Cruz.
The two men crashed onto the polished mahogany floor of the boardroom in a heap of flying paper and shattered glass. Richard grabbed Cruz’s left wrist with both hands, slamming it against the hard floor with brutal force again and again until the black detonator box popped free and skittered across the floor under the heavy conference table.
"Get off me!" Cruz roared, reaching for a knife tucked into his boot.
Detective Miller burst through the doors, stepping squarely onto Cruz's chest and pressing the hot barrel of his Glock directly against the hitman’s forehead.
"Move an inch," Miller growled, "and I fill this room with what's left of your brain."
Cruz froze, his breathing coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He dropped the knife.
On the floor near the doorway, Victor Sterling lay weeping, his hands cuffed tightly behind his back by a second deputy.
Richard sat back on his heels, gasping for air, his suit torn, his knuckles bleeding. He looked up toward the open doorway.
Luna stood in the frame, her dark hair tangled, her hands tucked quietly into the pockets of her oversized hoodie.
May you like
Richard stood up, walked over to her, dropped to his knees, and pulled her into an embrace so tight that it felt as if he would never let go.
"You're amazing," Richard whispered into her ear, tears finally spilling over his eyes. "You are the bravest girl I have ever met."
