Chapter 9 - One Glass of Water
The rain at Pier 91 was torrential, washing over the towering yellow shipping cranes and rusting steel containers like a deluge.
When Clara pulled her Civic behind a stack of lumber near the perimeter fence, the docks were eerily quiet. The sound of waves crashing against the wooden pylons echoed beneath the metal catwalks.
She grabbed her flashlights and trauma bag, slipping through a cut in the chain-link fence.
Following the sound of distant yelling, she moved quietly through the maze of dark containers until she reached the entrance of the Sub-Level Storage Vaults.
The heavy steel blast door was wide open.
Inside, the industrial elevator was stuck halfway between floors, its cables sparking violently.
Gunfire shattered the silence below.
Clara slid down the emergency stairs, her boots skidding on wet concrete.
At the bottom of the flight, in a vast, subterranean warehouse filled with wooden crates and emergency generators, the battle was already underway.
Frank Rossi was on the ground near a forklift, clutching a bloody shoulder wound. Three of Lorenzo’s men were trading heavy fire with six armed thugs positioned behind a row of shipping crates.
And at the center of the room, standing beside a broken control console, was Lorenzo.
His gun was empty, his suit coat was torn, and his brow was bleeding heavily from a blow to the head.
Standing five feet away, holding a matte-black pistol pointed directly at Lorenzo’s chest, was Julian Moretti.
Julian was a thinner, meaner version of Lorenzo, his face twisted in a triumphant, crazed sneer.
"You took everything from me, Lorenzo!" Julian screamed over the roar of the rain outside. "My shares! My family name! My house in Vancouver!"
"You tried to poison my mother, Julian," Lorenzo said, his voice flat and deadly even with a gun trained on his heart. "You're lucky I let you breathe this long."
"Your mother is a stubborn old witch!" Julian spat. "And you're a dead man!"
Julian’s finger tightened on the trigger.
From twenty feet away, behind a row of industrial water barrels, Clara saw the scene unfold.
She didn't have a gun. She didn't have armor.
She looked down at the heavy, five-gallon glass water bottle sitting on a nearby dispenser cart.
Without pausing to think, Clara grabbed the glass bottle, summoned every ounce of lifting power she had built during years of handling two-hundred-pound hospital patients, and hurled the thirty-pound glass jug with all her strength.
CRASH!
The heavy glass bottle struck Julian directly in the side of his head, shattering into a thousand jagged pieces and exploding five gallons of water over his face and shoulders.
Julian shrieked in pain and surprise, stumbling sideways, his gun firing wildly into the ceiling.
Lorenzo didn't waste a microsecond.
He lunged forward like a striking viper, caught Julian’s gun arm, twisted it upward until the bone snapped with a sickening crack, and slammed Julian’s head down against the concrete floor.
Julian went instantly limp.
Silence descended over the subterranean vault, save for the dripping of five gallons of water from the broken glass on the floor.
Lorenzo stood over his defeated cousin, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his forehead onto his dark sweater.
Slowly, he turned around.
Standing twenty feet away, soaking wet, holding a medical kit in one hand and a wooden beam in the other, was Clara Vance.
Lorenzo stared at her in absolute, stunned disbelief.
"Clara?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
Clara dropped the wooden beam. Her knees gave out, and she sank to the floor, buried her face in her hands, and began to laugh—a breathless, hysterical laugh of pure adrenaline and relief.
Lorenzo crossed the space in three long strides. He dropped to his knees in the puddle of water, pulled her hands away from her face, and gathered her fiercely into his arms, burying his face in her wet hair.
"You crazy, brilliant, terrifying woman," Lorenzo murmured against her neck, his voice shaking with emotion. "What are you doing here?"
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Clara pulled back slightly, wiping a mix of rain and blood from his forehead.
"I told you, Lorenzo," she whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. "I don't like leaving jobs unfinished."
