Chapter 2 - Blood in the Moonlight
The element of surprise was a fleeting currency, and Marin knew she had spent half of hers in the first three seconds.
The first operative hit the wall hard, his breath exploding from his lungs in a sharp gasp, but his training kicked in instantly. Even as he slid toward the floor, his left hand dropped to his thigh and cleared a tactical combat knife with terrifying speed.
Marin didn't hesitate. She brought the heavy steel surgical clamp down in a vicious arc, catching his forearm and deflecting the blade just as it sliced the air inches from her hip. The metal struck bone with a dull thud. The man grunted, his eyes wide with sudden, unadulterated shock beneath his balaclava. He hadn't expected a woman in scrubs to fight back with the mechanical efficiency of a combat veteran.
"Clear!" a harsh whisper echoed from down the hall as the second operative rushed forward to cover his partner.
Marin didn't try to fight them both in the open corridor. It was suicide. With a swift twist, she kicked the first man’s knee inward, dropping him to the carpet, and scrambled back through the bedroom door, slamming it shut behind her just as a burst of suppressed gunfire chewed through the upper panels of the wood.
Zip-zip-zip.
Splinters rained down over the bed. Adelaide gasped, her frail body jerking instinctively, though she couldn't scream.
"Marin..." Adelaide choked out, her hand trembling violently as she tried to pull the blanket over her chest.
"I'm here," Marin hissed, dropping into a low crouch beside the mattress. Her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer against her ribs, but her hands were frighteningly steady. She grabbed the two unopened bottles of concentrated antiseptic solution she had retrieved from the medicine cabinet earlier.
The door handle rattled. They were checking the latch. Finding it unlocked from her previous push, they realized she had retreated inside.
"Flush them out," a low, gravelly voice muttered from the hallway—the leader.
Marin unscrewed the cap of the first glass bottle with her teeth, spitting the plastic top onto the floor. She poured a thick, volatile ring of the high-concentration chemical across the polished hardwood threshold just inside the bedroom door, then splashed the second bottle over the bottom edge of the heavy velvet drapes hanging beside the window.
She needed a diversion, and she needed it now.
From her pocket, she pulled her heavy-duty work lighter—a relic from her past life that she kept for emergency candle-lighting during power outages.
The doorknob turned. The heavy oak door began to swing inward, a sliver of hallway light cutting across the dark room.
Marin flicked the lighter wheel. A bright yellow flame leaped into existence. Without a second thought, she tossed it directly onto the pool of antiseptic solution by the door.
Whoosh!
A sudden, intense wall of blue-white chemical fire erupted across the doorway, roaring upward and licking against the doorframe with ferocious heat. The sudden flashblindness and suffocating wall of flames caught the leading operative completely off guard. He yelled out, dropping his weapon as he stumbled backward into his comrades, beating frantically at his tactical vest where stray droplets had caught his sleeve.
"Fire! Fall back!" someone shouted in panic.
Marin didn't watch them retreat. Seizing the chaos, she grabbed Adelaide’s lightweight medical wheelchair parked in the corner, unlocked the brakes, and shoved it toward the bed.
"We are moving, Adelaide," Marin said, her voice dropping into a tone that brooked no argument. "Hold onto my neck."
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The 71-year-old matriarch of the Ferrante empire looked into Marin’s eyes, saw the cold, unyielding steel burning within them, and nodded. With a surge of adrenaline-fueled strength, Marin lifted the frail older woman out of bed and deposited her securely into the chair.
As the hallway filled with the sound of frantic shouting and the hiss of a portable dry-chemical extinguisher attacking the flames, Marin wheeled Adelaide toward the private service elevator in the back of the suite—a shaft that Elias Ferrante had installed for emergency medical evacuations, completely independent of the estate’s main electrical grid.
