Chapter 4 - The Boys Who Thought They Were Protected
The gas smelled like bitter almonds.
Not the nerve agent.
A sedative.
Marcus smashed the glass panel covering the emergency ventilation controls. Anna crawled beneath the chemical table and disconnected the intake fan.
I wrapped my jacket around the vent and fired into the locked door.
The first bullet damaged the electronic mechanism.
The second opened it.
We entered the corridor as campus alarms activated.
Students poured from classrooms.
Through the crowd, I saw Jason Harrington running toward the south exit.
I caught him near the stairs.
He tried to strike me with a metal flashlight.
I took it from him and drove him against the wall.
“Where is Lily?”
His arrogance lasted three seconds.
Then he saw Anna.
“You are supposed to be dead.”
She moved closer.
“Who told you that?”
Jason’s face went pale.
Noah Cole appeared at the upper landing with two campus officers.
They were not there to arrest him.
Both officers raised their weapons toward me.
Marcus fired into the sprinkler pipe above them.
Water exploded through the corridor. Students screamed and scattered. In the confusion, Anna pulled Jason into a classroom while I disarmed one officer.
The second officer ran.
Noah disappeared with him.
Jason sat against the teacher’s desk, trying to recover his confidence.
“My father is a United States senator.”
“Your father cannot protect you from the people he pays to disappear problems.”
“You are threatening me.”
“No. I am describing his world.”
Anna placed Lily’s bloodstained paper in front of him.
“Why did Elliot panic when he saw this?”
Jason looked at the symbol.
A circle divided by three lines.
“The Covenant.”
Marcus recognized the name.
After my retirement, Silas united corrupt officials and former criminal crews into a private organization. Each branch handled one function.
Politics.
Money.
Violence.
The symbol represented all three.
The row of numbers beneath Silas’s name was not a phone number.
It was a shipment code.
The nerve agent would leave through Pier 17 at midnight.
Jason began talking when Anna told him Silas planned to blame the attack entirely on the boys.
They had been recruited through their fathers.
Jason believed they were transporting experimental medication.
Lily discovered the truth and confronted Elliot.
Elliot tried to frighten her.
Jason struck her first.
Noah joined.
When Lily fell, Elliot told them to stop.
But Silas appeared through a video call and ordered them to continue until her face became unrecognizable.
“Why?” I asked.
Jason looked at me.
“He said you needed to see what happens when The Ghost chooses peace.”
My old life had found the cruelest possible language.
Not an attack on me.
An attack on the reason I had changed.
“Where did the helicopter take her?”
“Black Hollow.”
“Which entrance?”
“There are tunnels beneath the east greenhouse.”
Anna knew them.
She also knew Silas would anticipate that she remembered.
Campus police surrounded the science building.
Senator Harrington appeared outside with federal agents and news crews.
He had moved quickly.
He would frame us as the attackers, recover his son, and erase the laboratory evidence.
Marcus contacted one of our old allies inside local police.
The answer was bad.
A warrant had already been issued for Daniel Walker in connection with the dead gunman at Mercy General.
My quiet name was collapsing.
Soon investigators would compare fingerprints and discover who I had been.
For nineteen years, Daniel Walker protected Lily by remaining ordinary.
That identity was finished.
Jason’s phone rang.
His father.
I answered.
Senator Harrington said, “Release my son.”
“Release my daughter.”
“I do not have her.”
“You know who does.”
“Silas is not under my control.”
“No. You are under his.”
Silence.
I continued.
“The shipment leaves Pier 17 at midnight. Your name is attached.”
The senator’s breathing changed.
Jason had not known that.
His father had.
“You have no proof.”
“Your son is the proof.”
Harrington lowered his voice.
“If Silas believes Jason talked, he will kill my entire family.”
“That is the protection you bought?”
“I can help you reach Black Hollow.”
“In exchange for Jason?”
“In exchange for the ledger.”
Everyone wanted the same book.
A record capable of destroying them.
I agreed to meet at an abandoned courthouse in one hour.
I had no intention of bringing the ledger.
Jason laughed when the call ended.
“My father will kill you.”
Anna looked at him.
“No. Your father just decided whether Silas kills you first.”
We moved through an underground utility tunnel and exited three blocks from campus.
Marcus’s car waited.
Inside, my old phone displayed a new message.
A photograph of Lily inside the helicopter.
Her eyes were open.
A man held a gun beside her wired jaw.
Below the image, Silas had written:
Bring Anna and the ledger. The girl loses one finger every hour you delay.
Anna saw the message.
“He wants me more than the book.”
“Why?”
“Because I know who created the Covenant.”
“You said Silas did.”
She shook her head.
“Silas serves someone else.”
Before she could say the name, Jason Harrington screamed from the rear seat.
A red laser point rested on his chest.
May you like
A shot shattered the window.
Continue to the next part: A sniper attacks Daniel’s car to silence Jason before he can expose the Covenant’s founders.
