Page 73 of Ground Zero

The pier looked normal with no sign of the ambush he’d expected.

Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe?—

His phone suddenly buzzed with an incoming text.

The signal had apparently been restored.

His pulse jumped when he saw Sheridan’s name on the screen.

They found you. Run.

Four words. No explanation. No details.

But Maverick didn’t need them.

He pushed through the bookstore’s back door just as voices shouted outside.

Maverick sprinted toward the pier’s parking lot, his mind racing.

A burst of gunfire chewed up the wooden planks behind him. He vaulted over a railing, dropping eight feet to the beach below. His ankle protested but held as he hit the sand running.

Whoever these shooters were, they weren’t trying to arrest him.

They were trying to kill him.

He zigzagged between the pier’s support pillars, using them as cover.

Screaming came from the pier above.

More shots rang out, sending splinters of weathered wood spinning through the air.

The screaming transitioned into crying, panic, chaos.

A figure in tactical gear appeared ahead, weapon raised.

Maverick dove left, rolling behind a cluster of rocks as bullets sparked off the stones. He could shoot back, but he was outnumbered. There was no use.

He was pinned between shooters with nowhere to go but the ocean.

The ocean. Seventy-degree Atlantic water in street clothes.

But it was better than being riddled with bullets.

Maverick broke from his cover, sprinting for the waves as gunfire erupted behind him. He dove into the surf just as rounds stitched the sand where he’d been standing.

The cold hit like a physical blow, stealing his breath. But he kept swimming, diving deep, letting the murky water hide him from the shooters in the distance.

When his lungs screamed for air, he surfaced just long enough to grab a breath before diving again. But before going under he heard muffled shouts from the beach. He saw dark shapes moving along the waterline.

They thought they had him trapped. Ocean on one side, shooters on the other.

But Maverick had grown up in the water. Had spent years surfing. He knew currents, sandbars, and hidden paths through the waves.

If he could make it to the rock jetty five hundred yards north, he might have a chance.

Maybe.

The conference room erupted in chaos as someone’s radio crackled to life with reports of gunfire at the pier.