Chapter 10 - The Rooftop Sniper
Thomas hit Maya so hard they both went down.
The rifle shot shattered the light behind them.
Rosa screamed.
"Under the dock!" Thomas shouted.
Maya dragged Rosa behind a concrete barrier.
Thomas rolled beneath the SUV, blood burning through his side.
The sniper fired again.
Thomas saw the flash from the top of an old grain office two hundred yards away.
Not Jacques's usual men.
Professional.
He called Antoine.
The driver answered weakly from an ambulance.
"Boss?"
"Who does Landry use for contract work?"
"Why?"
"Because somebody just tried to erase Maya from two football fields away."
Antoine did not hesitate.
"Calvin Redd. Former police SWAT."
"Where does he stage?"
"Warehouse roof access from Dauphine service road."
Thomas ended the call.
Maya looked at him.
"You cannot chase a sniper with a bullet in you."
"Watch me."
"Thomas-"
"If he stays up there, none of us leave."
Rosa grabbed Thomas's sleeve.
"Don't go."
He looked at her small fingers.
There were a thousand reasons to walk into danger. Pride. Power. Revenge.
This was the first one that felt clean.
"Stay with your mother."
"You come back."
"Yes."
Thomas moved through the shadows beneath the pier.
He climbed a maintenance ladder, crossed a roofline, and entered the grain office from the rear stairwell.
The sniper heard him on the third floor.
Gunfire punched through the wall.
Thomas dropped, crawled beneath a row of desks, and fired through the plaster where the shadow moved.
A grunt.
Then silence.
Thomas rounded the corner.
Calvin Redd sat against the wall holding his thigh.
"Who hired you?" Thomas asked.
Redd smiled through clenched teeth.
"Everybody."
"Try again."
"Landry paid. Pike cleared the streets. Jacques gave the target."
Thomas crouched.
"Why Maya?"
"Because the ledger is bad. Her testimony is worse."
"What testimony?"
Redd laughed.
"You really don't know what she saw."
Thomas pressed the muzzle against Redd's wounded leg.
"Educate me."
Redd's smile disappeared.
"Six years ago, Gabriel Bennett met Jacques at Pier Four. Maya followed him. She watched your lieutenant kill her brother."
Thomas said nothing.
"She also saw you arrive ten minutes later."
Thomas's eyes narrowed.
"I was never there."
Redd shook his head.
"Maybe you don't remember. But there is video."
Thomas felt the world tilt.
Six years ago.
Pier Four.
A night he could barely remember because Jacques had kept his glass full after a political fundraiser.
Redd whispered, "Jacques did not just use your companies, Rousseau. He used you. Drugged you. Put you on camera beside bodies. Insurance."
Thomas backed away.
His phone buzzed.
A video message from Jacques.
Thomas opened it.
The grainy footage showed Pier Four six years earlier.
Gabriel Bennett lay dead on the ground.
A younger Thomas staggered into frame.
Jacques placed a gun in his hand.
Then looked directly into the security camera and smiled.
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