The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 211

Chapter 109-2

“Gas! Gas! Gas!” Dad’s voice barks. “Now!”

Two metallic thwack sounds echo across the audio loop. On the screen, dense, gray plumes of tear gas burst instantly over the windshields of both chase cars. White smoke floods the night-vision camera, obscuring the vehicles in a cloud of thick billowy haze.

“Moving in,” Locke’s voice comes through now. Cover the passenger side, Mayhem. Cobra, Bishop, take the cab.”

“Two minutes,” I whisper under my breath, watching the timers ticking down in the corner of Byte’s screen. “They’re right on time.”

Through the speakers, we hear the sharp, splintering crash of safety glass shattering.

“Out of the vehicle!” Mayhem’s roar echoes through the smoke. “Hands! Show me your hands!”

“Cab is clear,” Bishop checks in. “Driver’s secured. Zip-ties on.”

Everything is going exactly the way Locke said it would. Clean. Quiet. Fast. The escorts are choked out in their cars, the driver is neutralized, and the tanker is sitting idling in the middle of the empty road.

“They’ve got the truck,” Jade breathes, letting out a tiny, gasping laugh of relief. “They actually got the truck.”

“Wait,” Byte says sharply, his hands suddenly freezing over his keyboard. He leans closer to his monitors, his dark eyes narrowing under his fringe. “That’s not right.”

My stomach drops instantly, plunging into a ice-cold void. “What? What is it, Byte?”

“The rear pickup,” Byte says, his voice slightly losing its calm edge. “Look at the bed. There was a third guy hiding in the back, under a tarp.”

On the night-vision feed, shrouded in the swirling white tear gas, a dark figure scrambles out of the open bed of the trailing pickup truck. He isn’t wearing a mask, but he has a heavy, dark cloth wrapped around his lower face, coughing violently through the gas.

He isn’t trying to fight. He isn’t trying to clear his eyes. He’s crawling on his stomach through the dirt, dragging a heavy, black shotgun behind him, angling himself directly toward the driver’s side door of the idling tanker.

Where Locke is standing.

“Locke!” I scream at the monitor, as if he can actually hear me, my voice ripping raw out of my throat. “Locke, behind you!”

But of course my voice doesn’t travel through the one-way audio bridge. It just bounces uselessly off the windows of the penthouse.

Through the speakers, over the hiss of the gas and the idle roar of the tanker engine, a sharp, wet cough echoes. Then, the distinct, metallic clack-clack of a shotgun racking a shell.

1/2

Chapter 109

“Gun! Left flank!” Rook’s voice roars over the comms. “Left-”

BAM!

The gunshot shatters the audio loop, so loud it clips the speakers into a high-pitched, painful whine.

On the screen, a brilliant flash of white light blooms in the tear gas. A shadow stumbles violently backward near the front wheel of the tanker, crashing hard against the asphalt.

A sharp, ragged cry of pain tears through the comms.

“Down! Get down!” Mayhem shouts, his voice cracking into a primal, animalistic roar. “Now!”

BOOM!

A second shotgun blast rips through the darkness.

“I’m hit! Jesus Christ, I’m hit!” a voice cries out over the radio, choked with agony, panting violently. “Leg – it hit my leg -”

“Who is that?” Jade shrieks, leaping off the sofa, clutching her head with both hands. “Byte, who is that? Is that Mayhem? Is that Locke?”

“I don’t know!” Byte says, his fingers typing frantically against his keyboard as he tries to clean up the audio feed. “The signal’s distorting! Cobra, who’s hit?”

Through the speakers, total chaos erupts.

We hear rapid, frantic gunshots: three, four, five sharp pops of high-caliber handguns returning fire. Shouted curses, heavy boots slamming into gravel, the terrible, wet sound of someone choking over an open microphone.

“Get the tourniquet!” Cobra says. “Press down, hold him down! Stay with me, brother! Stay with me!”

“He’s bleeding too fast!” someone yells back, voice thick, ragged. “Get us out of -”

CRACK!

A loud, violent metallic pop echoes through the audio bridge, followed by a sudden, ear-splitting burst of pure static.

On the center monitor, the night-vision camera feed freezes. A wall of bright blue digital distortion sweeps across all three screens, wiping out the thermal imagery, the audio loop, and the backup feeds simultaneously.

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