Chapter 4
Z
The impact hit my knees like a sledgehammer, sending a shockwave of pain straight up my spine, but adrenaline took over before I could crash to the dirt. Gunshots shattered the quiet night behind me—three quick rounds from an unsuppressed 9mm pinging off the metal trash containers lining the alleyway.
“He’s down there! Kill him!” Mark’s voice screamed from above.
I sprinted down the alley, throwing my body behind a row of concrete barriers just as a second burst of gunfire lit up the dark brick walls. I drew my Glock, fired two suppression shots toward the top of the fire escape to force them back, and broke into a full run toward my unmarked car parked four blocks away.
My phone started ringing violently in my pocket. I pulled it out while running, my chest heaving for air. The screen read: CAPTAIN MILLER - PRECINCT 5.
I answered, ducking between two parked semi-trucks. “Captain!”
“Daniel, where the hell are you?” Miller’s voice was tense, stripped of all the camaraderie we’d shared over two decades of police work. “State troopers and Internal Affairs just executed a search warrant on your home locker and your personal vehicle. They found three kilos of uncounted cocaine and twenty thousand dollars in cash tied to the 2023 cartel seizure.”
“It’s a frame-up, John!” I shouted over the sound of my own gasping breath. “Evan Cole is out! Victor Varga paid off federal judge Vance! They set me up so I couldn't protect Claire!”
There was a long, heavy silence on the line. When Miller spoke again, his voice was filled with deep sorrow. “Daniel... you sound unhinged. Vance signed an emergency medical stay based on certified hospital records from Vanderbilt Medical Center. Internal Affairs has a signed warrant for your arrest for grand larceny, tampering with evidence, and official misconduct. If you don't come in right now and surrender your sidearm, I have to deploy the tactical unit to bring you in.”
“If I come in, my daughter dies!” I roared into the receiver.
“Daniel, don't do this—”
I yanked the battery out of my phone, threw the device onto the pavement, and stomped it into pieces with the heel of my boot. I was officially a rogue officer. In less than six hours, I had gone from a decorated twenty-seven-year police veteran to a hunted fugitive in the very city I had sworn to protect.
I reached my car, threw myself into the driver's seat, and hotwired the secondary tracker unit hidden under the dash, disabling the precinct's GPS signal. My hands were shaking, covered in grease and rain water. I had no badge, no backup, no legal authority, and the entire Davidson County Sheriff's Department was about to start hunting me down.
I needed help, and there was only one person in Nashville who hated Victor Varga more than I did: Rebecca Sloan.
I drove to Rebecca’s private townhouse in West End, parking two streets away in the shadows of an old oak tree. I snuck around to her back patio, slipped through the unlocked sliding glass door, and stood in her dark kitchen until she walked in carrying a glass of water, dressed in a silk robe.
She gasped, dropping the glass. It shattered on the hardwood floor. She reached for the panic button on her wall security panel, but I raised my hands slowly into the light of the stove hood.
“Rebecca, don't,” I pleaded softly. “It’s me. Please. Just give me five minutes.”
She froze, looking at my bruised face, my torn jacket, and the desperate eyes of a man who had lost everything. “Daniel... the radio news is running stories about you. They’re saying you took evidence from the vault to pay off Claire’s divorce debts.”
“Do you honestly believe that?” I asked, stepping over the broken glass. “After everything we went through to put Evan away? Do you think I’d touch that dirt?”
Rebecca looked at me for a long, agonizing moment. She slowly lowered her hand from the security key pad and let out a long breath. “No. I know you, Daniel. You’re a stubborn, over-protective fool, but you’re not a corrupt cop. What is happening?”
“Varga,” I said simply. “He paid off Judge Vance. Evan is completely healthy—I saw him ten minutes ago at a warehouse on the river, holding a gun and drinking whiskey. They’re going after the proceeds from Claire’s real estate settlement. They planted the narcotics in my locker to take me out of the play.”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed into sharp steel slits. She was a prosecutor before she went into private practice; she knew the rot inside the judicial system better than anyone. “Judge Vance... I always knew he was dirty. He closed a sealed hearing three months ago involving one of Varga’s dummy corporations. But Daniel, if Vance signed off on a fake medical record, there has to be a doctor at Vanderbilt involved.”
“Dr. Julian Vance,” Rebecca added suddenly, her eyes widening. “Judge Vance’s younger brother is the chief administrator of the trauma ward at Vanderbilt. He’s the one who signed Evan’s transfer papers!”
A cold smile broke across my face. “A family business.”
“Yes,” Rebecca said, turning toward her office desk and opening her laptop. “And family businesses leave paper trails. If we can prove Dr. Vance falsified those medical records, Judge Vance’s order is voided instantly, Evan goes back to maximum security, and Varga’s entire extortion scheme falls apart.”
May you like
“How fast can you pull those hospital records?” I asked, leaning over her shoulder as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“I can't pull them legally without a court order,” Rebecca said, looking up at me with a serious expression. “Which means we have to break into Vanderbilt Medical Center’s secure digital vault tonight. And you’re going to help me do it.”
