CHAPTER 297: CHAPTER - 297

Chapter 297

The motel parking lot, already a canvas of neon-lit despair, was now a three-ring circus of heavily armed sociopaths. The air was so thick with testosterone, gun oil, and pure, unadulterated ego that it was a miracle no one had spontaneously combusted.

In the center of the parking lot, having stepped out of a sleek, black Audi, was the man with the bullhorn. He was not in a suit. He was not in tactical gear. He was dressed in a pristine, blindingly expensive-looking velvet blazer of a deep, obnoxious purple. He was smiling, a wide, gleeful, shark-like grin, as he held the bullhorn to his lips. This, Rick realized, must be the infamous Marnus Warner. He was flanked by a dozen men in actual, high-end tactical gear—the kind of professionals who made Julian Croft’s rent-a-bodyguards look like mall cops.

It was, officially, a four-way standoff. And Rick and Sharon were in the dead center, in a ten-by-ten room that was about to become a human-sized blender.

Julian Croft, his face a blotchy, furious red, was the first to find his voice. His aristocratic cool was gone, replaced by the raw, screeching rage of a spoiled child.

"Marnus!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "You crawling out from under your rock? I thought my father paid you off!"

Marnus clicked the bullhorn, and his voice boomed across the lot, painfully loud and distorted, as if God himself had decided to become a game show host.

"YOUR FATHER’S CHECKS ARE AS WEAK AS HIS JAWLINE, JULIAN! HE TRIED TO LOWBALL ME. A MAN OF MY STATURE! SO I’M HERE FOR MY PROPERTY. THE LAPTOP... AND MY EMPLOYEE."

He gave a sharp, theatrical nod toward the doorway, directly at Nadia.

"I’m not your employee, you bastard!" Nadia shrieked, her voice high and ragged with a new kind of panic. She was no longer afraid of Julian; she was terrified of Marnus. "I was your partner!"

"THAT’S NOT WHAT THE FINE PRINT ON YOUR CONTRACT SAYS, SWEETHEART!" Marnus boomed, his voice dripping with condescending amusement. "YOU WERE A TOOL HIRED TO DO A JOB. YOU FAILED. YOU WENT ROGUE. YOU GOT YOURSELVES CAUGHT. AND NOW YOU’RE MAKING A MESS. A BIG, LOUD... AND FRANKLY, TACKY MESS!"

The sheer, absurd volume of the bullhorn in the tiny parking lot was almost funny.

Rick, still leaning against the wall, whispered to Sharon, "This is getting complicated. I’m losing track of who’s supposed to kill who."

"Shut up, Rick," Sharon hissed, her pistol wavering as she tried to cover all three new angles of attack.

Julian Croft, now completely unhinged, pointed a shaking finger at Marnus. "You’re not taking anything! My men will put you down! I’ll have you thrown in a gutter!"

"YOUR MEN?" Marnus’s bullhorn squealed with feedback. "YOU MEAN THE TWO GUYS IN THE RENTED SUITS? MY GUYS ARE GETTING PAID OVERTIME, JULIAN. THEY ARE VERY MOTIVATED. AND UNLIKE YOU, THEY’RE NOT WORRIED ABOUT DADDY CUTTING THEIR ALLOWANCE!"

"You..." Julian was speechless, sputtering, a fish drowning in his own rage.

Nadia saw her opening. This was her only chance. Her own two goons were trembling, their cheap pistols looking like children’s toys compared to the hardware now surrounding them. She had to pick a side, create a diversion.

"Julian, you impotent little boy!" she screamed, trying to draw his fire. "You want me? Come and get me! Or is this all you can do? Hide behind your bodyguards?"

"You fucking whore!" Julian finally shrieked, his composure shattering into a million pieces. The insult war was over. He had lost. And when a man like Julian Croft loses a war of words, he starts a real one. He turned to his professional bodyguards. "KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! I WANT HER HEAD!"

This was the spark. The single, stupid, spoiled-brat command that lit the fuse on the powder keg.

The second the words left Julian’s mouth, Rick was in motion. He didn’t think. He reacted. He grabbed Sharon by the back of her jacket, his voice a low, urgent roar in her ear.

"BATHROOM! NOW!"

He didn’t run. He tackled her. He slammed into her with the force of a linebacker, taking her off her feet and dragging her in a desperate, sliding, chaotic scramble across the filthy motel room carpet.

The world exploded.

It was not a few shots. It was an "all out war of bullets."

Julian’s two bodyguards, the professionals, instantly opened fire—not at Nadia, but at Marnus’s superior tactical team in the parking lot.

Nadia’s two goons, the idiots, panicked. They just opened fire on everyone

. The closest targets were Julian’s bodyguards, who were standing right next to them.

Nadia herself, a pro, didn’t panic. She emptied her SMG clip in a long, sustained BRRRRRRRRRT—not at Marnus, but at Julian, who was scrambling behind his car.

And Marnus’s team, the real orchestra of this symphony of destruction, returned fire from the parking lot. Their automatic weapons ripped the entire front of the motel room to shreds.

Plaster, wood, glass, and drywall vaporized. The air became a solid, screaming wall of noise.

Nadia’s two goons were the first to die. They were standing in the open, firing wildly. A burst of disciplined, three-round shots from Marnus’s team stitched them across their chests. They didn’t just fall; they were thrown backward against the wall, a fine red mist exploding from their backs as the high-velocity rounds tore through them. They were dead before they hit the floor.

Julian’s bodyguards were better. One of them spun, took a bullet in the arm, but still managed to put a round through the head of one of Nadia’s men. But he was hit from the side by Nadia’s wild SMG spray. His chest exploded in a red plume, and he collapsed. The other bodyguard managed to grab the screaming Julian Croft by his suit collar and drag him back behind their car.

Nadia, seeing her muscle instantly vaporized, didn’t hesitate. She rolled behind the ruined, king-sized bed, bullets tearing the mattress to shreds around her, stuffing and springs exploding into the air.

Rick and Sharon, meanwhile, had just crashed, in a tangle of limbs, blood, and mutual hatred, into the motel bathroom.

It was tiny. It was disgusting. The walls were covered in mold, the floor was sticky, and the air smelled like a chemical toilet.

"IN THE TUB!" Rick roared over the gunfire, yanking the moldy plastic shower curtain down.

They both piled into the old, cast-iron bathtub, one on top of the other, a desperate, awkward heap. Rick was on the bottom, Sharon on top, her face pressed uncomfortably into his bloody shoulder.

"Get your elbow out of my rib!" Sharon whisper-yelled, her voice high with panic.

"That’s not my elbow!" Rick grunted, trying to shift. "And your gun is digging into my kidney! I thought I told you to stay on your side of the room!"

"This is not what I had in mind when I said I was your partner!"

A stray round from a high-caliber rifle—probably one of Marnus’s men—tore through the motel’s exterior wall, through the flimsy bathroom drywall, and slammed into the ceramic toilet bowl.

K-SHRAAANG!

The toilet didn’t just crack. It exploded into a thousand pieces of white porcelain shrapnel. They both screamed, ducking their heads as broken ceramic rained down on them. Water from the now-shattered pipe began spraying everywhere, a high-pressure jet of cold, clean water in the middle of their filthy, bloody hell.

Rick, spitting out a chip of toilet bowl, yelled, "This is the worst safe house ever!"

The firefight outside raged. It was a solid sixty seconds of pure, apocalyptic noise: the BRRRRT of Nadia’s SMG, the deep THUG-THUG-THUG of Marnus’s rifles, the sharp CRACK-CRACK of Julian’s last bodyguard returning fire from behind the car.

Insults were still flying, even in the middle of the war.

"I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB, MARNUS! I’LL HAVE YOUR HEAD!" they heard Julian shriek from the parking lot.

Marnus, still on the bullhorn, actually laughed. The sound was distorted and terrifying. "YOU CAN’T EVEN PROTECT YOUR OWN LAPTOP, YOU LITTLE BRAT! YOU’RE A DISGRACE!"

"I’LL KILL YOU BOTH!" Nadia screamed from behind the mattress, which was now just a pile of shredded foam.

Rick and Sharon just... waited. Huddled in the tub, soaking wet from the broken toilet pipe, covered in blood, plaster dust, and now, God help them, toilet water.

Rick looked at Sharon. She was pale, shaking, her eyes wide as saucers. He was deadpan. "You know..." he said, his voice barely audible over the chaos, "that kiss was the second-most disgusting thing that’s happened to me today."

Sharon, without missing a beat, looked at the toilet water spraying the wall. "It’s not even in my top five. Now shut up and listen."

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.

Not a gradual winding down. It just... stopped. One last, furious burst of automatic fire. A single, final pistol shot—BANG!—that sounded like Nadia’s.

And then... silence.

A silence that was heavier, more terrifying, than the noise. The only sound in the ruined motel was the hiss of the broken toilet pipe, the drip-drip-drip of water, and the distant, fading sound of a car engine peeling out of the parking lot.

Rick and Sharon stayed in the tub, not breathing, not moving.

"Is it... is it over?" Sharon whispered, her voice trembling.

"Or," Rick whispered back, his eyes on the shattered doorway, "are they just reloading?"

He slowly, slowly raised his head, peeking over the cast-iron rim of the tub, his eyes scanning the smoke-filled, utterly destroyed motel room. The air was gray with plaster dust and cordite. He could see the bodies of Nadia’s two men, unmoving. He could see the shattered remnants of the bed. He couldn’t see Nadia. He couldn’t see Julian. He couldn’t see Marnus.

He just saw the smoke.

And silence.