Tension Under Fire
430 Words
Chapter 3
The warehouse smelled of diesel and old salt. Stacks of shipping containers formed a labyrinth, rainwater dripping from their steel ribs. Ava moved with silent precision, her boots muffled on the slick floor. She had agreed to meet Marco here to examine a shipment manifest—but the place screamed trap.
She heard it before she saw it: the faint scrape of boots on catwalk, the whisper of a gun bolt. She flattened against a crate as a burst of suppressed fire stitched the air where she’d been.
“Welcome party,” Marco muttered in her earpiece. “Three shooters minimum.”
“You set me up?”
“Not this time.”
She rolled across the aisle, drew her pistol, and returned fire, glass shattering overhead. Marco’s silhouette dropped from the catwalk like a hawk, landing behind one attacker. Two swift strikes and the man went down.
Ava moved deeper into the maze. She felt alive, terrifyingly so. She slipped behind a shipping container, waited for a shadow, then grabbed an ankle, yanked, and drove an elbow into a gut. The man folded. She pressed her pistol to his neck. “Who sent you?”
“Cruz,” he gasped.
Ava knocked him unconscious and moved on.
She found Marco near the loading bay, crouched over a laptop he’d rigged to the warehouse network. “They’re using this place to stage shipments for Valderrama’s cultural fund,” he said. “Guns under art supplies.”
“Classic,” Ava murmured.
Another shooter appeared on the mezzanine. Marco’s hand went to his sidearm but Ava was faster—one clean shot dropped the man before he could aim. Marco looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“What?” she asked.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“Too late.”
They worked as a unit now, moving container to container, clearing angles, sweeping for threats. By the time sirens grew in the distance, the warehouse was theirs.
Marco closed the laptop. “We just jumped two steps ahead.”
“And painted bigger targets on our backs,” Ava said.
Rain hammered the tin roof. She felt his hand on her arm, steady, grounding. “You okay?”
“I hate that question.”
“Fair.”
But she didn’t pull away.
Later, in his car, soaked and trembling, she caught his gaze at a red light. “Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.
He hesitated. “Because someone has to.”
It wasn’t an answer. But it was close enough.
- Writer
