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“No...” Joey's voice echoed in horror through the filthy warehouses as Brenda let off one last shot.
“Why… did you come back?” Brenda asked Amy through the pain in her shoulder, staring at Joey's dead body.
Amy raced to Brenda.
“You're shot! Oh my… you’re bleeding! I'll go call for help...” Amy ran away instead of answering Brenda's question.
“Mack, where are...” Brenda crawled over Joey's dead body. As she did, she heard Andy’s limo speeding away.
Brenda made her way back into the silent warehouse.
“Mack!” she called out.
“Over here,” Mack called back, waving his pen light up at the ceiling to reveal his location. Brenda held her wounded shoulder and staggered to Mack's location. Mack was standing over Stan's body. “You're hurt. Are you ok?”
“I'll live. Is he the only one?” Brenda asked, struggling to remain tough.
“I checked the back. Spotted two bodies in the river,” Mack explained in a careful voice. “I don't know what went down outside. This guy was tough to take down. shot him when he heard Curanto screaming for his life. Don’t understand these coward guards.”
“Curanto is dead,” Brenda revealed. “Amy saved my life. Didn't manage to get a confession from the rat before I killed him, though. Sorry.”
“Don't be,” Mack gingerly wrapped his arm around her good shoulder. “Let's get you out of here.”
Brenda looked through the darkness at Mack. Suddenly, she threw herself against Mack and wrapped her single unwounded arm around him. To Mack's shock, she began to simply… cry. Why? Mack never knew. Sometimes, he guessed, a woman even as tough as Brenda Lawson just needed to let it all out.
Mack didn't say a word. Instead, he walked Brenda back to the front of the warehouse. Carefully checking Joey's dead body, he spotted the clear bullet hole sitting in the middle of the man's forehead.
He took out Brenda’s FBI card and pressed it into her hand. They both knew what it meant. Then they just sat on the cold, hard ground in silence, waiting as the siren get louder, and louder, and louder.
Chapter 8
Two weeks later, Brenda stepped into Brent Summers’ office with her left arm in a blue sling. Mack followed in behind her.
“You're under arrest,” Brenda told Brent in a stern tone, tossing down an arrest warrant onto his fancy desk. “Evidence shows that you made calls to Joey Curanto on the day I was attacked.”
“Get your hands behind your back,” Mack snarled, yanking a pair of handcuffs from his tattered trench coat.
Brent stared into Brenda's hard face with eyes that began to fill with fear. He grabbed the arrest warrant with a shaky hand. To his horror, it was legal and signed by a judge.
“You—”
“Shut up and do what Detective Abernathy told you to do,” Brenda snapped at Brent. “You're finished. Curanto is dead.”
Brent looked at Mack. Mack was prepared to rip his face off.
“Yeah, Joey may be dead, but his brother is still alive. You're a dead woman, Brenda. Your time has yet to come,” he promised, struggling to speak in a hateful voice as he continued to shake with fear. “Do you hear me? You're dead!”
Mack walked behind Brent's desk, snatched Director Summers to his feet, and slapped on a pair of handcuffs. “You have the right to remain silent...”
Brenda watched Mack haul Brent away with satisfied eyes.
“I'll catch up to you later,” she called out.
Mack waved a hand into the air as he dragged Brent outside. Brenda sauntered to her office, passing a line of shocked faces.
“Get back to work,” she snapped.
Henry Tillers was one of the faces staring at Brenda. He wondered how one single woman had taken down a major crime boss and then managed to arrest a high-profile FBI director? She hasn’t been transferred to New York for too long. She is just starting to get to know the place.
