The Seven Sins: Cross Reckoning

Chapter 6: Crossfire

Another shot tore into the pillar inches above Silas's head, concrete dust exploding across his shoulder, and he shoved Naomi flatter against the ground without thinking, his own body angled to shield hers.

"Stay down," he said. "Do not move."

"Two shooters," Reyes called from the next pillar over, already crouched, already pulling his own weapon from beneath his jacket. "Upper level, by the ramp. Maybe a third by the exit."

Silas drew his gun and risked a glance around the edge of the pillar, just long enough to catch movement, a figure in dark clothing shifting between two parked cars thirty feet away, and pulled back a half second before another round chewed into the concrete where his head had just been.

"They're not here for a conversation," he said.

"No kidding," Reyes muttered, and fired twice in the direction of the movement, the sound of the shots ringing off concrete walls loud enough to make Naomi flinch hard against the ground.

"I have a daughter," she said, her voice cracking. "I have a daughter, I can't, I can't die in a parking garage, I can't."

"You're not going to." Silas kept his eyes forward, scanning, calculating angles the way he'd calculated them a hundred times before, in a hundred rooms just as ugly as this one. "Reyes. Cover me."

"Cross, don't you dare ."

Silas was already moving, breaking from behind the pillar in a low, fast crouch, closing the distance toward the nearest parked car in three seconds flat while Reyes laid down cover fire behind him, and he heard a grunt of pain from somewhere near the ramp that told him at least one of Reyes's shots had landed. He dropped behind the car's rear bumper and pressed his back against cold metal, breathing controlled, listening.

Footsteps. Fast, moving toward his position from the left.

He came up and around the side of the car in one motion, gun raised, and the shooter rounding the corner didn't have time to adjust before Silas fired twice into his chest. The man dropped without a sound beyond the impact of his own body hitting concrete.

"One down," Silas called back.

"Two more up top," Reyes answered. "They're pulling back toward the stairwell, I think they're trying to."

A car engine roared to life somewhere on the upper level, tires screeching against concrete, and Silas swore under his breath, already moving back toward Naomi's position, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her up to her feet.

"They're running," he said. "Which means this wasn't meant to kill all of us. It was meant to kill you."

"Me?" Naomi's face had gone white. "Why me, I haven't even given you anything yet, I haven't."

"Because someone already knows what you're carrying." Silas scanned the garage one more time, weapon still raised, before finally lowering it as the sound of the fleeing car's engine faded up the exit ramp. "Which means whoever sent them isn't guessing about the document. They know it exists. And they know exactly who's been keeping it safe."

Reyes jogged over, breathing hard, kicking the downed shooter's gun away from his body out of pure habit before crouching to check the man's pulse and finding nothing there.

"No ID," Reyes said, going through the man's jacket fast. "No phone. Professional. Somebody sent a cleanup crew, not amateurs."

"Which means somebody in the Assembly already suspects Naomi has what her father left behind." Silas looked at her, and for the first time that night, something in his expression shifted from cold calculation into something closer to urgency. "You said there's a safehouse. We need to move, now, before whoever sent them realizes this attempt failed."

Naomi nodded, shaking, pulling her coat tighter around herself as she led them at a near run toward her car, and they were three steps from it when her phone buzzed again in her pocket, the same unknown number as before.

She read it out loud with a voice that had gone hollow.

"Next time I won't miss. Give him the file, and you and your daughter live. Keep it, and I finish what tonight started."

Silas took the phone from her hand and stared at the message, jaw tightening, before his eyes lifted slowly to meet hers.

"They don't want you dead," he said quietly. "They want the file destroyed. Which means it's still out there somewhere, untouched, and they're more afraid of what's written in it than they are of killing to keep it buried."

He handed the phone back, already moving toward the car, his voice dropping into something low and absolute.

"Get in. We're not going to the safehouse."

Naomi froze halfway into the driver's seat. "What? Why not, that's the only place."

"Because whoever's hunting you already knows more than they should." Silas slid into the passenger seat beside her, eyes fixed on the exit ramp where the shooters' car had vanished. "Which means somewhere close to you, close to your father's old operation, there's someone feeding them information in real time."

He looked at her directly, and the words landed heavy in the small, closed space of the car.

"Someone you trust is the one who told them where to find you tonight."