Chapter 16 - The Warehouse
Police surrounded the old warehouse before dawn.
Michael stayed in the command vehicle because Reese threatened to have an officer handcuff him to it.
Emily stayed beside him.
Mason was with Helen under protection.
“You don’t have to be here,” Michael told Emily.
“Yes, I do.”
“You could be at the hospital.”
“I know.”
He nodded. No argument.
That mattered more than he realized.
Inside the warehouse, Mercer and Sophia had barricaded themselves in an upstairs office.
Negotiators called.
No answer.
Then a window shattered.
A folder flew out and scattered papers across the loading yard.
Emily recognized the red cover.
“The folder.”
Officers gathered the pages.
Bank records. Thomas’s note. The original audit copies.
Sophia had carried the evidence all this time.
A speaker crackled from the building.
Sophia’s voice.
“Michael.”
He looked up.
“I know you’re out there.”
Reese swore under her breath.
Sophia continued, “You always choose the wrong woman.”
Michael’s face hardened.
“First Mom. Then Emily. You never chose me.”
Michael took the negotiator’s phone.
“Sophia, come out.”
“You hit your wife for me.”
Emily flinched.
Sophia laughed through the speaker.
“For one second, I had my brother back.”
Michael looked at Emily, shame raw in his face.
Then he answered his sister.
“No. For one second, I became the worst version of myself. That belongs to me, not you.”
Silence.
Emily’s eyes filled.
Michael continued, “Come out before more people get hurt.”
Mercer shouted something inside.
A gunshot cracked.
Everyone ducked.
Emily’s hand flew to her belly.
Another shot.
Then Sophia screamed.
The side door burst open.
She stumbled out with blood on her sleeve—not hers, Reese later realized.
“Don’t shoot!” she screamed.
Officers tackled and cuffed her.
“Mercer shot at me!”
Reese shouted, “Where is he?”
Sophia looked back at the warehouse.
“Gone.”
Impossible.
Police had every exit covered.
Then smoke curled from a basement vent.
Fire alarms began to ring.
Mercer had set the records room on fire.
Reese grabbed Sophia. “Where’s the tunnel?”
Sophia stared at her.
“What tunnel?”
Michael remembered his father bringing him there as a child.
He looked toward the river.
May you like
“Oh, no.”
The warehouse had an old freight tunnel leading directly to the docks.
