Chapter 86 - The Counter-Strike on LaSalle
The loading bay smelled of dry grain dust, diesel exhaust, and wet rust.
A single halogen work light was strung from an overhead beam, swaying in the draft that swept through the broken loading bay doors. Below it, Clara’s silver sedan sat with its driver-side door open, the interior light casting a dim yellow square onto the concrete floor.
Beside it stood a black Ford F-350, its diesel engine still ticking as it cooled in the sub-zero air.
I moved quietly along the concrete footing, keeping my back pressed against the corrugated wall, the tire iron heavy and cold in my palm.
Inside the main processing office—a glass-walled enclosure elevated six feet above the grain hoppers—shadows shifted behind cracked, grime-stained windows.
"You don't have the clearance, Clara!" a voice bellowed from inside the office.
It was Arthur.
He was supposed to be in federal holding on Clark Street. He had made bail—or someone with deep, immediate political power had pulled strings to get him released on an emergency writ within three hours of his arrest. His face was bruised, a dark contusion swelling his left temple, and his tailored overcoat was stained with road salt.
He held a semi-automatic handgun in his right hand, pointed directly at Clara, who stood against a bank of vintage server racks mounted into the concrete wall.
Clara’s face was bleeding from a cut along her hairline, but she remained upright, her laptop resting on an industrial metal workbench beside her, connected by a thick blue Ethernet cable to a terminal blinking inside the server rack.
"The clearance doesn't matter, Arthur," Clara said, her voice trembling slightly from the cold, but steady in its resolve. "The second you posted that bond, the Chicago syndicate wrote you off as a liability. You think they secured your release so you could take a flight to Costa Rica?"
"They secured my release because I know the routing numbers!" Arthur shouted, his arm shaking as he leveled the weapon at her chest. "Give me the hardware key! Hand over the flash drive, Clara, or I swear to God I will leave you in this hopper with four tons of rotting corn!"
"If you shoot me, the failsafe engages," Clara replied calmly, though her breathing was shallow. "The four-minute timer is running on that terminal. If my biometric key doesn't authenticate by twelve-fifteen, the forty-four million doesn't go to Lichtenstein. It doesn't go to your partners. It routes straight into the Illinois State Crime Victims Compensation Fund under Sarah Croft’s name."
"You lying bitch!" Arthur lunged forward, swinging the pistol downward toward her skull.
I didn't think. I launched myself off the concrete stairs, throwing my entire weight against the office door.
The flimsy latch gave way with a splintering crack. I drove the heavy steel tire iron directly into Arthur’s shoulder blade with a sickening thud.
Arthur shrieked in agony, dropping the weapon as he stumbled sideways into the rack of vintage circuit breakers. Sparks showered across the floor, illuminating the dusty room in blinding flashes of blue and white light.
The gun skittered across the linoleum, stopping against Clara’s boot.
She didn't hesitate. She stepped on the weapon, kicked it backward into the dark void beneath the server rack, and turned to look at me, her eyes wide with shock.
"Julian?"
Arthur was groaning on the floor, clutching his dislocated shoulder, his face pressed against the filthy linoleum. "Julian... kill him... he was going to take everything..."
I stood over my cousin, breathing heavily, the tire iron gripped tightly in my right hand.
"Shut up, Arthur," I said, my voice dead and flat.
I looked at Clara. Her cut was bleeding down into her collar, but the cold, calculating mask she had worn in the Chicago loft was gone. What remained was a twenty-eight-year-old woman shivering in an unheated grain elevator, holding onto an electronic terminal that contained the price of her mother's destruction.
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"You came," she whispered.
"I brought the ledger," I said, setting the heavy, steel-bound book down on the metal workbench next to her laptop. "The one my father kept."
