Within These Walls

Chapter Ten: Terminal Velocity

Dante Richard Hawke

The roar of the Gulfstream G650’s engines wasn't just a sound; it was a physical force that vibrated through the marrow of my bones. The hangar was a cavern of shadows and the sharp, toxic scent of burnt kerosene. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm that matched the pulsing red dot of a sniper’s laser dancing across the concrete floors.

"He’s there," Nova’s voice crackled in my ear, cold and sharp as a winter frost. "Thorne just pinged the hangar’s security system. He’s prepping for a hard takeoff. Dante, you have six minutes before that bird is in the air. If he clears the runway, we lose him forever."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was a shadow in a torn tuxedo, moving through a labyrinth of steel crates and fuel drums. I watched Nova from the corner of my eye. She was a lethal blur in black tactical gear, her long hair braided back so tight it looked like a crown of thorns. She wasn't the woman I’d bickered with at the gala; she was a predator.

She tapped a command into her tablet, and the hangar’s fire suppression system hissed to life with a sound like a thousand angry snakes. A massive cloud of chemical foam exploded over the two guards at the base of the plane, turning the world into a white, blinding haze.

"Don't move, you piece of s**t!" I roared, stepping out from the fog, my Glock leveled at the man who had haunted my dreams for twenty years.

Marcus Thorne spun around at the base of the air-stairs. He looked pathetic—a man who had built an empire on blood and ash, now reduced to a sniveling coward clutching a leather ledger to his chest. His silver suit was wrinkled, and his eyes were wild with the kind of terror I’d been waiting half my life to see.

"Dante... Nova..." Thorne stammered, backing toward the stairs. "You don't understand. If I don't leave, they’ll kill me. They’ll kill all of us! The Bird... it’s bigger than you know!"

"I don't give a f**k about the Bird right now, Marcus," I growled, stepping into the harsh overhead lights. The heat from the jet’s exhaust licked at my face. "I want to hear you admit what you did to my family. I want to hear the truth before I send you to hell."

Nova moved from the shadows, flanking him from the left. She held up a silver key, her blue eyes flashing with a cold, terrifying light. "My father gave me this to unlock the truth, Marcus. You spent twenty years trying to bury us. But guess what? The dead don't stay buried."

Suddenly, a red bead of light settled on the center of my chest.

"Dante, move!" Nova screamed.

She tackled me with the force of a freight train. We hit the concrete hard, rolling behind a heavy metal tool chest just as a high-caliber sniper round shattered the floor where I’d been standing a second before. The sound was a whip-crack that made my ears ring, followed by the screech of metal as another round punched through the tool chest.

"Sniper!" I yelled, pulling Nova closer to me. The heat of her body was the only thing grounding me in the chaos.

Thorne saw his opening. He scrambled up the stairs, the door of the jet beginning to hiss shut.

"He's getting away!" Nova screamed over the scream of the engines. She was already back on her tablet, her fingers flying as she tried to override the hangar's power grid.

"Not on my watch," I said, a cold resolve settling over me. I looked at her—really looked at her—and the bickering, the hatred, and the fake engagement all burned away. "Nova, get to the control room! Shut down the hangar doors! I'm going after him!"

"Dante, no! The sniper—"

"Go! Now!"

I broke cover. Every instinct told me to stay down, to wait for backup. I ignored it all. I sprinted across the open concrete, the world turning into a blurred tunnel of grey and white. Thwip-crack. Another sniper round whizzed past my ear, hot enough to singe the air.

I jumped. My fingers caught the edge of the air-stairs just as they began to retract. My shoulders screamed as the weight of my body was jerked upward. I was hanging onto the side of a moving jet, the wind from the turbines trying to tear me off like a leaf.

Nova Starling Quinn

"Dante!" I screamed, but he was already out of reach, a dark silhouette clinging to the white metal of the plane.

I didn't have time to think. I turned and ran for the service ladder leading to the overhead control booth. My boots pounded against the metal rungs, my breath coming in jagged gasps. I could see the sniper now—a shadow perched in the rafters of the neighboring hangar.

I reached the booth and slammed my tablet into the hardline port. "C'mon, you piece of junk, talk to me!"

The screen flickered. Codes scrolled past in a blur of neon green. I found the override for the main hangar doors. They were massive, fifty-foot slabs of reinforced steel. I hit the command to close them.

The gears groaned, a deep, metallic wail that drowned out the jet. The doors began to slide shut, moving toward the nose of the plane.

"Dante, get inside!" I yelled into the comms. "I'm trapping him!"

Below me, I saw Dante haul himself into the cabin of the jet just as the door sealed. The plane was taxiing fast now, heading straight for the closing gap of the hangar doors. It was a game of chicken with ten tons of aviation fuel.

Suddenly, a bullet shattered the glass of the control booth. Shards of glass sliced into my cheek, but I didn't flinch. I ducked behind the console, my eyes locked on the monitor. The sniper was trying to take me out so the doors would stop.

"Not today, bastard," I hissed.

I rerouted the hangar’s power to the overhead cranes. A massive steel hook, used for moving engines, began to swing across the rafters. It slammed into the sniper’s perch with a bone-shattering thud. I didn't look to see if he fell. I turned my attention back to the jet.

The nose of the Gulfstream was inches from the closing doors. The pilot slammed on the brakes, the tires screaming and smoking as the plane lurched to a halt, pinned inside the hangar like a caged animal.

Inside that plane, Dante was alone with the man who killed our world.

"It’s over, Marcus," I whispered, my hand trembling as I wiped the blood from my face. "It’s finally over."

Dante Richard Hawke

The pressurized cabin door hissed shut, sealing me inside a vacuum of luxury and terror. The engine's scream was muffled now, replaced by the rhythmic thumping of the pilot’s desperate attempts to reverse the jet. Outside, I could hear the grinding of Nova’s hangar doors—the sound of steel meeting steel as she successfully locked us in.

I stood in the narrow aisle, my lungs burning. The interior of the Gulfstream was a sickening display of Thorne’s stolen wealth: cream leather seats, polished mahogany tables, and gold-plated fixtures. I took a step forward, my heavy boots sinking into the plush carpet.

"Drop it, Marcus!" I bellowed.

At the back of the cabin, Thorne was scrambling to open a hidden floor safe. He looked up, his face a mask of sweating, twitching desperation. He wasn't holding the ledger anymore; he was holding a snub-nosed revolver.

"You should have stayed in that crawlspace, Dante," Thorne rasped, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "You were a good investment. I gave you a career. I gave you a purpose. And this is how you repay me?"

"You didn't give me a career," I snarled, moving slowly down the aisle, my own weapon leveled steady at his forehead. "You gave me a front-row seat to your rot. Every time I looked at you, I saw the gasoline on my father's shoes. Every time you patted me on the back, I smelled the smoke."

Thorne’s hand was shaking so violently the gun barrel was drawing circles in the air. "The Bird doesn't leave loose ends. If you kill me, they’ll just send someone more efficient. You’re already dead, Dante. You and that Quinn girl."

"Maybe," I said, my voice dropping to a low, lethal vibration. "But I’m taking the man who started the fire with me."

Nova Starling Quinn

Through the shattered glass of the control booth, I watched the jet buck like a trapped animal. The engines were still whining, but the plane wasn't going anywhere. My hands were blurring across the tablet, locking down every exit in the facility.

"Dante, respond," I whispered into the comms, my eyes scanning the thermal feed I’d hijacked from the plane’s internal sensors.

I saw two heat signatures in the cabin. One was standing—broad, steady, and dominant. That was Dante. The other was huddled and erratic. Thorne.

Suddenly, a new alert flashed red on my screen. Movement at the perimeter.

"Dante, we have company," I said, my voice hardening. "Black SUVs entering the tarmac. No plates. These aren't the feds."

The Bird had arrived to clean up the mess. They weren't here to save Thorne; they were here to erase the evidence. Including the jet. Including us.

I looked at the hangar's main fuel line controls. I had one card left to play to keep the hitmen back, but it would turn the hangar into a tinderbox.

"Dante, you have sixty seconds to get off that plane," I barked. "I'm about to flood the floor with fire-suppressant gas and high-pressure foam to block the SUVs, but the sparks from the jet's turbines will turn this place into an oven."

"Just a second, Nova," his voice came through, grimmer than I’d ever heard it. "I’m not leaving without the ledger."

I saw the signatures on the screen move. They collided. A flash of motion.

"Dante!"

The sound of a single gunshot echoed through the comms, followed by a sickening silence.