Chapter 7 - The Cold Ground of Cicero
The industrial district of Cicero smelled of stagnant canal water, diesel fumes, and decaying iron.
Rain poured down in relentless sheets, drumming against the reinforced steel roof of Desmond’s armored van.
Frankie drove with the headlights completely blacked out, using night-vision monitors mounted on the dashboard.
In the rear compartment, Desmond sat locked into his specialized transport rig, a loaded semi-automatic weapon resting across his lap.
My phone buzzed violently in my scrub pocket—a restricted number that had pinged my device three times since we crossed city limits.
I snatched it from my pocket and jammed it against my ear.
“Leo?” I whispered, keeping my voice beneath the hum of the diesel engine.
“Nora!” Leo’s voice came through the speaker, cracked with sobbing terror.
“Nora, they locked me in the cold storage depot off 35th Street!”
“A guy named Vance said he was going to burn the building down with me inside to clean up some paper trail!”
“Leo, listen to me!” I cried out, leaning forward against the safety harness.
“Stay low to the concrete floor!”
“Do not breathe the upper air if they start a fire!”
“We are outside right now!”
The line went dead with the sharp crackle of static.
Desmond reached across the narrow space between our seats, his large hand clamping over my trembling fingers on the phone.
“He is still breathing,” Desmond said, his eyes glowing with ruthless resolve in the dashboard light.
“Frankie, take out the perimeter guards at gate four.”
“No sirens, no headlights.”
“Leave Julian alive for me.”
The van breached the rusty chain-link gate with a muffled crunch, rolling into the vast interior of the Cicero freight warehouse.
The scent of burning accelerant hit our nostrils the second Frankie kicked the van doors open.
Down the long aisle of stacked wooden shipping pallets, orange flames were already licking at the ceiling rafters.
Tied to an exposed steel pillar beneath the burning platform was my brother Leo, his face bruised and bloody.
Standing twenty yards away, holding a burning road flare, was Julian Vance, surrounded by four heavily armed mercenaries.
“Right on schedule, Desmond!” Julian shouted over the roar of the spreading fire.
“I knew the little nurse would lead you straight into the incinerator!”
Desmond engaged his motorized chair, rolling out of the van’s hydraulic lift onto the wet concrete floor of the warehouse.
Frankie stepped behind him, raising his rifle, but Julian’s men instantly aimed their weapons directly at Leo’s chest.
“Drop the rifle, Frankie!” Julian ordered, waving the flare near an open drum of industrial solvent.
“One twitch of your finger and the boy gets hollow points through the sternum before the fire even touches him!”
Frankie hesitated, glancing down at Desmond for the command.
I could not stand still; every instinct in my body screamed to save the boy I had raised since our parents died.
I leaped down from the van step, running toward the pillar.
“Leo!”
“Nora, stop!” Desmond shouted, but I was already past the perimeter of the van.
Julian smirked, tossing the road flare straight into the trail of solvent leading to the base of Leo’s pillar.
The chemical line caught instantly, a wall of bright blue fire erupting upward, cutting me off from my brother.
Leo screamed as the heat scorched his clothes, pulling desperately against the nylon ropes binding his wrists.
“Say goodbye to the family nurse, cousin!” Julian yelled, turning toward the warehouse rear exit with his armed men.
Desmond did not hesitate.
He did not reach for his gun; he reached down to the release levers on his wheelchair’s side panels.
He unlocked the carbon-fiber leg braces, clicking them into their maximum rigid support mode.
“Frankie, cover the girl!” Desmond roared.
Using the immense, brutal power of his upper back and shoulders, Desmond Gallagher threw himself forward out of the chair.
His locked braces struck the concrete with a bone-jarring metallic crack, his legs acting as rigid stilts under his commanding weight.
He caught the steel handrail of an industrial pallet jack to balance his frame, his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl of raw fury.
With terrifying, dragging strides, Desmond used his sheer upper-body strength to lunge past the wall of fire.
He caught Julian Vance by the throat with his bare left hand, lifting the younger man off his feet and slamming him violently against a steel container.
The mercenaries turned to fire, but Frankie’s rifle erupted in three controlled bursts, dropping the guards to the wet concrete.
Julian gasped for air, his feet dangling six inches above the floor as Desmond’s iron fingers crushed his windpipe.
“You thought... I needed legs... to break your neck, Julian?” Desmond growled, his face illuminated by the dancing flames.
I rushed through the smoke, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall, and doused the flames around Leo’s boots.
I cut the nylon ropes with my emergency medical shears, and Leo collapsed into my arms, weeping against my shoulder.
Behind us, Desmond tossed Julian to the floor like a broken ragdoll, his rigid braces locking him upright against the container wall.
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“The council meeting starts in one hour, Julian,” Desmond said, staring down at his terrified cousin through the drifting smoke.
“And you are going to confess every single crime in front of Marcus Thorne.”
