Charlie Takes the Blame; Steve's Suspicion
Click!
Arthur unclipped his heavy rappelling rope from his tactical harness without bothering to retrieve the line.
Beams of bright tactical light shot violently down from the dark cliff above, followed immediately by a deafening, echoing burst of automatic gunfire.
At the exact same moment, heavy car engines roared violently to life in the distance.
Arthur's racing heart sank; he sprinted aggressively forward through the mud and wet grass.
After flawlessly dodging the stray bullets whizzing past his head, he seamlessly pulled his fully customized, matte-black vintage bike directly from his invisible private space.
He swung his muscular frame into the wet leather saddle and kicked the heavy starter. With a thunderous, vibrating growl, he tore aggressively downhill.
Vroom! Vroom!
More engine snarls echoed aggressively right behind his rear tire. Clearly, thanks entirely to Steve's suffocating, military-grade paranoia, the heavily armed guards hadn't been housed inside the luxury villa itself, but they were permanently camped nearby on the sprawling estate grounds to prevent inside jobs.
Hearing the pursuers' bikes rapidly closing in, Arthur leaned his torso incredibly low against the gas tank to minimize wind resistance and twisted the throttle wide open.
His modified engine howled exactly like rolling thunder, the heavy bike shooting exactly like a black spear along the winding, treacherous mountain road toward the foot of the hill.
Vroom!
The two pursuing bikes behind stayed glued flawlessly to his tail, their aggressive riders obviously intimately familiar with every single blind bend and apex of this private road.
Arthur glanced sharply down at the illuminated speedometer; he was only pushing seventy miles per hour.
The steep hill Steve's luxury villa sat on wasn't incredibly high.
Two more sharp, banked turns and he would finally hit the open main road.
Then he could truly open her up.
But the lethal pursuers, knowing every single pothole and curve, kept relentlessly accelerating.
He watched their single, bouncing headlights in his vibrating mirror, flawlessly splitting his tactical attention between the road ahead and the threat behind.
His handsome face darkened with resolve.
He whipped the heavy throttle again; the newly installed, high-output engine shrieked with mechanical fury.
In mere seconds, his speed topped a terrifying hundred miles per hour, the bike barreling aggressively ahead into the dark night.
Brrrrrt!
The absolute instant he violently accelerated, a low, rapid burst of automatic gunfire rang out.
One of the hardened riders actively chasing him was steering flawlessly with a single hand, while the other gripped a lethal micro-UZI, spraying 9mm rounds wildly into the darkness.
If it absolutely hadn't been for his LV4[Driving] skill magically letting him weave left and right with superhuman, instinctual precision, a bloody hit would have been absolutely disastrous.
Vroom!
At long last, he shot aggressively off the private mountain road and merged seamlessly onto the wide, open California highway.
Tucking his body incredibly low, Arthur twisted the throttle to its absolute physical limit.
Exactly like a black arrow loosed from a heavy bow, he violently pulled away from the two struggling bikes behind him.
Steve himself followed aggressively in his massive Jeep Wrangler, his eyes bloodshot with pure rage after seeing his two massive safes and his entire accumulated fortune completely vanish into thin air.
One calloused hand locked firmly on the steering wheel, he stayed right behind the pursuing bikes while furiously barking orders into a tactical radio with his other hand.
"Stay on him, fast! I want him taken alive."
"Ten grand in cold hard cash to whoever catches that biker alive."
Even as he desperately offered the massive financial reward, Steve seethed with blinding fury and dark desperation.
A year and a half ago, he had been a core part of the master gold thief Charlie Croker and his elite crew.
The highly specialized team used clever, flawless deception to succeed in the winding waterways of Venice.
They stole a full, staggering ton of pure gold bricks right from a secret Italian Mafia stronghold.
Back then, the designated getaway man who aggressively drove the boat and cars to draw the heavily armed Mafia away was Handsome Rob, the undisputed speed-demon driver who could flawlessly handle absolutely any vehicle with an engine.
That charismatic playboy was Charlie's best friend and longtime, loyal pal.
Now, the deeply paranoid Steve strongly suspected the incredibly skilled motorbike rider actively trying to lure them away tonight was Handsome Rob.
At that exact, terrifying thought, Steve violently slammed his heavy boots on the brakes.
He glared viciously through the windshield at the three fading taillights about to completely vanish from sight.
Then he aggressively swung the heavy Wrangler around on the empty highway, his tires smoking against the asphalt, and headed straight back to the fortified villa.
"Lock down the entire perimeter area around the villa."
"Search every single inch!"
"They absolutely need a massive, organized team to move two multi-ton safes. That lone bike was highly likely just a decoy. The heavy safes must still be hidden somewhere near the villa."
"Team One, sweep the main villa. Every room, every dark corner, check it all."
"Team Two, head straight to the sheer cliff behind the villa. Find out exactly how they climbed up!"
"And search every single possible hiding spot nearby."
"Caves, dense grass, check absolutely everything. Do not let a single suspicious person or place slip by."
Clearly, the paranoid Steve had guessed entirely wrong.
He automatically assumed that tonight the people who had successfully broken into his villa, slipped flawlessly past his elaborate defenses and military-grade security systems, and managed to magically spirit away the two massive safes holding nearly a ton of gold bricks by some impossible trick were absolutely none other than the legendary gold thief Charlie Croker and his surviving crew.
Steve had once been an intimate part of Charlie's team.
For more than a grueling year he had been constantly on the run, even actively laying highly false financial trails across Europe just to draw Charlie and the others away from his true location.
Because he knew Charlie's meticulous, brilliant methods entirely too well, he feared his old partner all the more.
Steve watched the villa's Security Personnel and his own heavily armed men start a tight, systematic tactical search in every single direction under his furious orders.
He personally took a few trusted men straight to the top of the steep cliff behind the villa to rigorously inspect the breach.
He completely didn't spare his two dead, bloody bully dogs lying in the mud a single second glance.
"Boss, there is a heavy rope and steel pitons anchored right here!"
A guard crouched carefully at the muddy cliff's edge, swept a bright tactical flashlight over the dark rock, and quickly spotted Arthur's flawless climbing setup.
"They absolutely must have climbed the sheer cliff using these driven pitons. Just now the fleeing rider went straight down the pre-rigged rappel rope from this exact spot."
Steve's chiseled face was as incredibly dark as storm water. His men and the villa's elite security teams were desperately searching absolutely everywhere but still hadn't found exactly where the two heavy, multi-ton safes were hidden.
Dozens of heavily armed men had fanned out aggressively across the sprawling area and still hadn't located Charlie or anyone else lurking nearby in the shadows.
Steve knew perfectly well those specific safes were top-of-the-line Worthington models he had paid an absolute fortune for.
They possessed the most secure, incredibly complex internal locking mechanisms on the entire consumer market.
Even if John Bridger, the legendary lock-picking master he had ruthlessly shot dead over a year ago, miraculously came back to life, it would absolutely still take him a good ten or twenty agonizing minutes to crack them open.
But John had been personally, violently executed by Steve's own hand.
He was absolutely certain of the kill.
Steve had fired three heavy shots directly into John Bridger. Two brutally to the chest, and one dead center straight through the heart.
When Charlie's getaway car had violently plunged into the freezing glacial water in the Alps, Steve hadn't actually seen the bodies surface, so he logically couldn't be one hundred percent sure they were all dead.
But right before he and his greedy men left the mountain pass with the stolen gold, he had absolutely seen John's lifeless corpse float slowly up from the dark depths of the lake.
So the brilliant lock-picking master of Charlie's crew was absolutely, undeniably dead.
"There is absolutely no way Charlie could successfully find another world-class lock-picking master this incredibly fast."
"The massive safes must absolutely still be nearby."
"Maybe even still hidden deep inside my own villa."
The terrifying, paranoid thought made Steve's aggressive face darken even more.
He glared down the sheer cliff into the abyss one last time, then violently turned on his heel and strode aggressively back toward the main house.
Tonight, even if he absolutely had to dig three feet into the solid ground, Steve would violently find those two missing safes holding nearly a ton of gold and most of his ill-gotten fortune
,and he would finally find Charlie Croker and his crew.