Chapter 4 - The Strike at the Docks
The Calumet River industrial docks were dark, deserted, and battered by freezing wind from Lake Michigan.
Inside a massive, rusted steel warehouse at the edge of Pier 14, Raymond Thorne stood beside a high-powered speedboat, sipping cognac from a glass flask while four armed guards paced the perimeter.
Thorne was a greasy, sharp-faced man in his fifties, wearing an expensive mink coat over a tactical vest.
"Where the hell is the extraction team?" Thorne grumbled into his radio, glaring at his wristwatch. "They were supposed to have the Vance girl twenty minutes ago!"
Static hissed over the receiver. No answer came.
"Try them again!" Thorne barked at his second-in-command.
Suddenly, the warehouse's heavy steel doors were struck by a dark, heavy mass.
BOOM.
The metal groaned under the force of an incredible impact.
"What the hell was that?!" Thorne yelled, pulling a nickel-plated revolver from his coat.
BOOM.
The heavy iron hinges sheared off with a screech of tearing metal, and the doors crashed inward onto the concrete floor, sending a cloud of rust and dust into the icy air.
Out of the swirling white snow outside stepped Holden Cross.
He walked with slow, deliberate steps, flanked by twenty heavily armed enforcers clad in tactical gear. But walking directly at Holden's right hand—without a leash, without a chain, his eyes glowing like burning coal in the darkness—was Phantom.
Thorne stepped back in sheer terror, his face draining of all color. "Cross... how did you find this place?!"
"You made a mistake, Raymond," Holden said, his voice echoing through the vast steel warehouse like thunder. "You burned a barn six years ago. You killed an innocent man. And tonight, you sent men into my home to hurt a little girl."
"Kill them! Kill all of them!" Thorne shrieked, ducking behind a stack of wooden crates.
His guards raised their automatic weapons, but Holden's team was faster. Precise, disciplined gunfire echoed through the warehouse as Cross's men eliminated the perimeter guards within seconds.
Thorne scrambled toward the rear exit, his boots slipping on the frozen concrete.
"Phantom," Holden said softly, pointing a single finger toward the fleeing crime boss. "Take him."
Phantom launched forward like a black missile, his powerful hind legs driving him across fifty yards of concrete in three seconds.
Thorne turned around, firing two frantic shots from his revolver, but both missed wildly in his panic.
Phantom struck Thorne square in the chest, knocking the breath from his lungs and slamming him back against a steel support beam. The dog’s massive paws pinned Thorne's shoulders to the ground, his jaws hovering mere inches from Thorne’s throat, letting out a low, guttural snarl that made the dying criminal weep in absolute horror.
"Please! Don't! Don't let him kill me!" Thorne whimpered, his hands shaking violently as he dropped his weapon.
Holden walked up slowly, stopping beside the pinned man. He looked down at Thorne with cold, merciless eyes.
"You took everything from that child, Raymond," Holden said softly. "You thought power meant taking whatever you wanted from the weak. But you forgot that the weak sometimes find protection."
Holden looked down at Phantom.
May you like
"Hold him," Holden commanded.
Holden turned to Marcus. "Call the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Give them the encrypted files from Thorne's laptop, the arson records, and the location of his illegal weapons caches. Let him spend the rest of his pathetic life in a federal cell thinking about the dog he couldn't break."
