Chapter 4 - THE ALLEYWAY ARCHIVE
The alley smelled of damp garbage, stagnant rainwater, and the heavy metallic stench of industrial heating oil.
When I rounded the corner of the brick wall, the driver had already pinned Eleanor Vance against a rusted dumpster. His thick left hand was clamped firmly over her mouth, muffling her desperate, terrifying whimpers, while his right hand reached into his trench coat for a pre-filled glass syringe.
"Drop it!" Arthur’s brother screamed, raising his blue steel revolver with both hands.
The driver didn't even flinch. He didn't drop the syringe. With terrifying, mechanical speed, he spun Eleanor around, using her small, fragile body as a human shield while his right hand whipped out from beneath his coat—not with a gun, but with a sleek, silenced pistol.
Phht. Phht.
Two quiet, coughing pops echoed in the narrow alley.
Arthur’s brother stumbled backward. Two neat, dark holes blossomed across the chest of his checkered jacket. He looked down at his chest with a expression of mild, detached surprise, his revolver slipping from his fingers and clattering onto the wet asphalt. He collapsed onto his knees, then fell flat on his face into a puddle of yellow rainwater.
"No!" Eleanor gasped as the driver released her mouth.
I lunged forward before the driver could realign his sights on me.
I drove my shoulder straight into his midsection, pinning him against the brick wall. The force of the impact knocked the silenced pistol from his grip, sending it sliding across the wet pavement toward the dumpster.
The driver growled, a guttural, animalistic sound, and brought his heavy elbow down onto the back of my neck.
Pain exploded behind my eyes—a white-hot blinding flare that threatened to tear my consciousness away. I slammed my knee upwards into his groin, feeling his grip loosen for a fraction of a second. Using his momentum, I grabbed his lapels, twisted my hips, and threw his two-hundred-pound frame onto the concrete.
His head struck the corner of the iron dumpster with a dull, heavy crack. His body went limp instantly, his eyes rolling back into his head as he lay unconscious in the rain.
I stood there, panting, wiping blood and rainwater from my eyes.
Eleanor Vance was huddled against the far wall, her hands pressed against her ears, her entire body shaking in violent, convulsive shocks.
"Mrs. Vance," I rasped, kneeling beside her, keeping my voice as calm and gentle as possible. "Mrs. Vance, look at me. I'm a friend of Arthur's brother. We need to move. Now."
She looked at me, her clouded blue eyes completely lost in a maze of shattered memories. "Arthur? Is Arthur coming back from the lab? He said... he said he left his keys in the desk..."
I reached down to help her up, but as I pulled her arm, her heavy brown wool coat swung open.
Taped to the interior lining of her coat were four small, transparent plastic pouches containing digital memory cards, three handwritten research journals, and a sealed glass vial filled with a clear, amber liquid.
She hadn't been overpaying for her medication for eight months.
She had been smuggling Arthur’s research out of the Aegis laboratory one piece at a time, hiding it inside the lining of her clothes every time she visited the pharmacy.
And Dr. Vane hadn't been trying to kill her to hide a crime.
She had been trying to retrieve the last copy of the neuro-inhibitor formula before Eleanor’s dementia caused her to lose it forever.
A shadow fell over the entrance of the alley.
I turned my head slowly.
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Dr. Barbara Vane stood under the flickering yellow neon sign, flanked by two more men in black suits. In her right hand, she held a small, sleek electronic detonator.
"You really should have bought your gauze and left, stranger," Dr. Vane said, her voice smooth, calm, and utterly chilling in the night air.
