Chapter 38
The first shot went wild, shattering a window.
Chaos erupted anew. Civilians who'd been heading for exits now dove for cover. FBI agents shouted commands but couldn't get clear shots with so many people between them and Buckley.
Griff's world narrowed to one objective: get to Sarah.
The guards pinning him had frozen at the sound of gunfire. Griff drove an elbow into the nearest one's ribs, making him double over. The second guard reached for his weapon, but Griff rolled, sweeping the man's legs.
"Ghost is mobile," Maya reported through comms.
The drugs were finally burning out of his system, but his head still pounded from the rifle butt, his shoulder screaming where they'd aggravated the Arlington wound. He pushed through it. Pain was just information.
Buckley was on his knees now, wild-eyed, swinging the handgun from one side of the room to the other.
Griff's chest tightened with panic until he spotted Sarah—behind an overturned table, holding something against her chest. Her hand? Had she hurt herself getting free?
Agents were between her and Pemberton, but she was too close to the man. Buckley had zeroed in on his number 2. The idiot could easily hit Sarah instead….
"I need a clear path to Sarah," he said into his comm, fighting to keep the desperation out of his voice.
"Working on it," Deke replied. "But Buckley's losing it. No pattern to predict."
Pemberton was crawling across the floor, trying to reach another exit.
Buckley yelled, incomprehensible words laced with anger and fear, firing at him. The bullet sparked off marble inches from Pemberton's head. The Treasury official curled into a ball, whimpering.
FBI agents were closing in, but cautiously. "Senator Buckley, put down the weapon."
"Stay back!" He fired toward them, forcing them to cover. "It's all lies. Deep fakes. CGI."
Through his earpiece, Griff heard Ronan coordinating: "Deke, can you get behind him?"
"Negative. Too many civilians."
"Izzy?"
"No angle."
He grunted in frustration.
Buckley saw him. The gun swung his way.
"This is YOUR fault. You and that woman—"
"Her name is Sarah Winters," Griff said, standing slowly, making himself a target. Drawing Buckley's focus away from her. "And she destroyed your conspiracy with a laptop."
"SHUT UP!"
Another shot. Griff didn't flinch, though it passed close enough that he felt the air displacement. If he could keep the man focused on him, Sarah, and the innocents fleeing the room, wouldn’t suffer.
Behind Buckley, his team moved silently into position—Deke flanking left, Axel right, Maya somewhere he couldn't track. They needed more time. And an opening.
"The kill switches are dead," Griff continued, inching toward Buckley. "The people you planned to murder are safe. Tank's death? Avenged. Game over, dude."
"I still have codes." Buckley fumbled for his phone with his free hand. "I can still—"
The lights cut out.
Izzy's work. Complete darkness for three seconds.
Griff moved on instinct, muscle memory from a thousand missions. Buckley would aim where Griff had been standing—classic amateur mistake. He rolled left as Buckley fired blind—once, twice.
The lights blazed back on.
Buckley stood center stage, gun sweeping frantically, looking for targets. His expensive suit was ruined, his political career destroyed, his empire in ashes.
Griff spotted Sarah. She'd used the darkness to reach the podium, was standing at the microphone, left hand cradled against her chest, clearly injured but still fighting.
Griff's gut twisted. The woman he—no, not the time for that realization—was in Buckley's sights. Injured. Exposed. Too far away to reach.
The gun swung toward her.
Griff didn't think. He moved.
The tackle came in low and brutal, his bad shoulder driving into Buckley's midsection. They crashed to the stage together. The gun skittered away. Buckley fought with desperate, manic strength, but Griff had done this before. Had done this in places far worse. Against far more lethal opponents.
A knee caught his head wound. Stars exploded across his vision. Buckley got a thumb toward his eye, but Griff twisted, using his weight advantage.
Then Deke was there, and Axel, pulling Buckley off him, zip-tying the senator while he screamed about conspiracies and frame-jobs.
"Secure," Deke reported.
Through blurred vision, Griff saw federal agents swarming the stage. "Everyone down! Weapons on the ground!"
"We're Knight Tactical," Ronan announced, hands visible. "Admiral Knight's team."
"Where's Pemberton?" Griff asked, trying to sit up. The room spun violently.
Maya's voice came through comms: "Got him. Trying to crawl out the kitchen exit. Real classy."
Sarah's voice rang out from the podium, clear and strong: "My name is Sarah Winters. I'm a federal investigator. And the evidence you've seen tonight is real."
Griff tried to focus on her, but his vision was graying at the edges. Someone was calling for medics. His head wound was worse than he'd thought—probably needed stitches, maybe worse.
But they'd done it. Buckley in custody. Pemberton captured. The conspiracy exposed. Forty-seven people saved.
Tank would have been proud.
The last thing Griff saw before the darkness took him was Sarah at that podium, battered but unbroken, telling the truth to the whole world.
Then nothing.