Chapter 6 - Old Phantoms
The dry crack of hickory striking bone echoed sharply in the quiet woods. The armed mercenary let out a strangled cry as his suppressed pistol tumbled into the pine needles, his arm dropping uselessly to his side. Before he could turn or draw a secondary weapon with his left hand, I stepped inside his guard, drove the rubber-tipped end of my walking stick deep into his solar plexus, and swept his trailing leg from beneath him. He hit the forest floor heavily, gasping desperately for air that his paralyzed diaphragm refused to provide.
The second man—the one searching the cab of my Chevy—spun around at the sound of the scuffle, reaching for the holster at his hip.
He was younger, faster, and clearly trained in close-quarters combat, but he made the fatal mistake of underestimating an old man with a cane. As he lunged toward me, clearing his weapon from its holster, I triggered the high-lumen tactical strobe in my left hand, flashing fifteen thousand lumens of blinding, disorienting light directly into his dilated pupils.
Blinded and flinching, he swung wildly. I sidestepped his clumsy thrust, caught his wrist in a joint-lock I had practiced ten thousand times on military training mats, and used his own forward momentum to slam him face-first into the reinforced steel quarter-panel of my Chevy. The impact knocked him out cold instantly, his body sliding limp down the side of the truck onto the gravel.
I stood over them, my chest heaving slightly, the cool forest air stinging my lungs. Thirty years of retirement hadn't erased the muscle memory; it had only made me more efficient, eliminating wasted movement in favor of brutal, definitive neutralization.
Working quickly, I stripped both men of their weapons, tossing the slide-removed pistols into the deep brush where they couldn't be easily retrieved. Using the heavy-duty plastic zip ties from my duffel bag, I bound their wrists and ankles tightly together, anchoring them to the steering column of their own black Tahoe.
The first man—the one with the paralyzed arm—was slowly regaining his breath, his eyes wide with terror as he looked up at me from the dirt. He was sweating profusely despite the chill in the air, finally realizing that Julian Kensington had sent them into a meat grinder.
"Who... who the hell are you?" he wheezed, his jaw clenched against the throbbing pain in his arm. "We were told you were just an old retiree... a civilian."
"Julian Kensington lied to you," I said coldly, leaning down and rifling through his tactical vest until I found his primary satellite encrypted radio and a thick envelope of cash. "He sent you here to do his dirty work because he’s too weak to do it himself. Who gave the operational order? Was it Julian, or the mother?"
"The old lady," the mercenary choked out, spitting blood into the dirt. "Eleanor Kensington. She called our firm in Virginia three hours ago. She said the girl had stolen trade secrets... told us to sanitize the truck, retrieve any data, and make sure neither of you made it to a federal courthouse."
"Where is Ares?" I asked, my voice hardening. "The Malinois. Is he still on the estate?"
"We... we don't handle the dog," he stammered, flinching as I shifted my grip on the hickory baton. "Kensington kept him inside the house. He’s paranoid... locked the gates, brought in four more armed perimeter guards from our firm. They're locked down until the private jet is ready at the county airfield tonight."
They were running. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. Julian and Eleanor knew that once Sarah reached federal authorities, their empire of medical fraud would crumble. They were planning to abandon the estate, board a private charter out of the jurisdiction, and leave their lawyers to delay the DOJ while they disappeared into a non-extradition country with their laundered millions. If they made it to that airfield, Sarah would spend the next decade fighting defamatory lawsuits from abroad while her abusers lived in luxury.
I reached into his pocket, pulled out the keys to the Tahoe, and tossed them into the woods. "You sit here and think about your life choices," I told the bound man. "In about two hours, a federal tactical team from Baltimore is going to sweep this park and take you into federal custody for attempted murder. I suggest you cooperate with them if you ever want to see daylight again."
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I climbed back into my faded red Chevy, turned the ignition, and threw the truck into gear. The clock was ticking. If I waited for Marcus and his FBI agents to clear the bureaucratic hurdles and cross state lines, the Kensingtons would be airborne.
I had to go back to the lion's den alone. I had to retrieve that flash drive from the study floorboards and stop that family from leaving the estate before the trap finally snapped shut.
