The Concrete Tomb
The travel from A secure underground safehouse near Snoqualmie Pass & Caden’s Private Server Lab to Echo Parking Garage, Lower Level B2 consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The concrete of the Echo Parking Garage dripped with groundwater seepage, creating dark stains that spread like bruises across the floor. Caden killed the headlights of the stolen Ford Fusion three levels up, letting the gloom of Lower Level B2 swallow him whole. The fluorescent lights overhead hummed at a frequency that buzzed against his teeth, half of them dead, the rest flickering in erratic strobes.
Fourteen seconds until the meeting time. He counted them off in his head while his eyes adjusted to the dim.
The garage smelled of oil, stale exhaust, and the metallic tang of corroded rebar. His phone sat in his palm, burner number active, the last text from Evangeline burned into his memory. *Toby asked if we could get pizza when you come home. I told him yes.* She didn’t know where he was. She couldn’t know.
A black sedan sat alone on B2, positioned near the exit ramp. Its engine idled, exhaust fogging in the cold air. Caden scanned the structural columns, the blind corners, the stairwell door that hung slightly ajar. Reid had chosen this location for its isolation, its limited sightlines, its perfect geometry for an ambush.
*You think trees will protect her, Voss?*
Caden’s hand drifted to the SIG Sauer tucked at his hip. The weight was familiar. The weight of decisions made in half-seconds.
He walked down the ramp, footsteps echoing in the hollow space. His shadow stretched and shrunk with each dead light he passed, a phantom preceding him. At the sedan’s hood, he stopped. The driver’s window rolled down, revealing Reid Covington’s face.
The heir to the Covington empire looked relaxed in a way that only the truly privileged could manage. His tailored jacket hung open, no visible weapon, but his eyes held the lazy confidence of a man who’d never faced real consequences. A man who’d always had someone else to clean up his messes.
“Voss.” Reid smiled. “You came alone. I’d say I’m impressed, but I genuinely expected better judgment from a man who survived my father’s boardroom purge.”
“You have five minutes,” Caden said. His voice carried flat across the concrete. “Then I walk.”
“Walk where? Back to that charming safehouse in the pines? The one with the peeling linoleum and the water heater that groans like a dying animal at 3 AM?” Reid tilted his head. “We knew about it three hours after you checked in. Traffic cameras at the turnoff. License plate recognition. Did you really think a thirty-minute head start would matter?”
A chill worked its way down Caden’s spine, but he kept his face still. Evangeline. Toby. The clock was already ticking faster than he’d accounted for.
“You wanted a meeting,” Caden said. “I’m here. What’s your price?”
“My price?” Reid laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “My father wants you broken, Voss. Not dead—that’s too easy. He wants the Voss name dragged through every tabloid, every regulatory hearing, every courtroom in the state. He wants your son to grow up knowing his father was a thief, a liar, a man who destroyed his own legacy because he couldn’t keep his hands out of the company till.”
The accusation landed like a slap. Caden had known it would come. The Covingtons had manufactured paper trails, backdated transactions, forged signatures. They’d built a cage of evidence and called it justice.
“The only thing I stole was your father’s access to the compliance logs,” Caden said, stepping closer. “And we both know what we’ll find when they’re audited.”
Reid’s smile flickered. A crack in the veneer.
In that same moment, Caden’s peripheral vision caught movement in the sedan’s back seat. A shape shifting. A glint of metal rising.
He dropped.
The silenced round punched through the air where his head had been, shattering a side mirror on a parked SUV ten feet behind him. Caden rolled, came up behind a concrete pillar, SIG already drawn. His heartbeat measured the seconds—two, three—while the shooter adjusted aim.
Reid was shouting. “Finish it! Now!”
The sedan’s back door opened. A man in tactical black stepped out, pistol extended, scanning for Caden’s position. His movements were professional, economical. A contractor. Someone who’d done this before.
Caden risked a glance around the pillar. The shooter was advancing, using the sedan’s body for cover. Reid had ducked behind the steering wheel, his civility stripped away, leaving only the panicked animal beneath.
Eleven feet of open ground between Caden and the shooter. No clean shot. The contractor had him pinned.
Then the stairwell door exploded open.
Owen moved like a blade through smoke. He’d looped around through the upper levels, dropping down the emergency stairs while the shooter’s attention fixed on Caden. His first shot took the contractor in the shoulder, spinning him sideways. The second went wide as the man recovered, firing back.
The gunfire in the enclosed space was deafening. Concrete chips sprayed. Caden pushed off the pillar, closing the distance while Owen exchanged suppression fire. The contractor went to cover behind the sedan’s trunk, blood soaking his sleeve, but his weapon never wavered.
Owen took a graze to his own shoulder, the fabric tearing, a thin line of red blooming. He didn’t stop. He advanced, firing, forcing the shooter to keep his head down.
Caden reached the driver’s side door. Reid fumbled for something in the center console—a backup weapon, maybe, or a panic button. Caden wrenched the door open, grabbed Reid by his expensive jacket, and hauled him out.
The impact against the concrete pillar was vicious. Reid’s head snapped back, his nose crunching, blood streaming over his lips. Caden pinned him there, forearm across his throat, while behind them, Owen drove the contractor back with a final exchange of fire. The shooter stumbled, bleeding heavily, and crashed through the stairwell door into the darkness above.
Silence fell. The ringing in Caden’s ears slowly subsided.
Owen moved to the stairwell, weapon trained on the door, blood tracking down his arm. “He’s on the run. Won’t get far with that wound. But I’m down to my last mag.”
“Hold the position,” Caden ordered. He turned back to Reid, whose arrogance had curdled into something raw and terrified. “The safehouse. You said you traced it.”
“Traffic—traffic cams—” Reid gasped. “We didn’t have time to move on it yet. My father wanted me to close you first.”
A lie. Maybe. But the truth didn’t matter anymore. If the Covingtons had the location, it was already compromised. Evangeline and Toby were sitting ducks.
Caden’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket, keeping his weight on Reid’s chest. A text from an unknown number.
*Weather alert: Heavy storms moving into your area. Advise immediate relocation.*
It was Petra’s code. She’d activated the emergency protocol from the safehouse. Something had spooked her, or—
The phone rang. The safehouse line.
Caden answered.
For a moment, there was only static. The hum of the garage’s failing lights. The ragged breathing of the man pinned beneath him.
Then a child’s whimper filled the speaker. Small. Terrified.
Caden’s blood turned to ice.
*”Daddy? The scary man has a crowbar.”*