DEAD LOAD (A Nick Stello Action Thriller) Chapter Three: The Rough Ashlar

The handles snapped toward the ceiling. The loaded tray pivoted over its wheel, and the steel support legs tore across the concrete with a shriek that filled the workshop. Wet mortar rolled over the lip and struck the floor in a heavy gray sheet.

Despite his training, the leader dropped his eyes toward the motion.

Kate threw her weight sideways.

She tipped with the chair. Its rear leg struck the leader across his shin, forcing him to step back rather than be pulled down. His gun hand followed Kate instinctively, but the muzzle lost contact with her head.

Nick crossed the distance.

He caught the opposite wheelbarrow handle and drove the steel frame forward. The rim of the tray struck the leader above the knees, folding his stance and pinning his lower legs against the workbench. The impact did not throw him across the room. It did not need to. It took away the stable platform the pistol depended on.

The Glock fired.

The report struck the walls and came back twice. A round punched through the cedar ceiling, showering the workbench with splinters and dust.

Nick trapped the leader’s wrist with both hands and drove the gun away from Kate. The man reacted quickly, rotating his shoulder and stepping into the pressure before Nick could complete the lock. Good training. Better than the men outside. He tried to turn the trapped arm into a collision and force Nick backward over the overturned wheelbarrow.

Nick gave him half a step.

The leader committed his weight, expecting resistance. Nick removed it. The man lurched forward, and Nick redirected the movement onto the oak workbench. His forearm struck first, then his shoulder, then the side of his face. The Glock came loose.

Nick caught it before it reached the floor.

The leader recovered fast enough to turn toward him, but not fast enough to regain his balance. Nick drove him back against the bench, folded his arm behind him, and pressed the captured pistol beneath the base of his skull.

“Hands flat.”

The man hesitated.

Nick increased the pressure on the shoulder until the joint approached its limit. “Flat.”

The leader spread both hands against the scarred oak.

Nick kept the Glock in place while he pulled a pair of plastic restraints from the man’s vest. One wrist went around the iron bench brace. The other followed. Nick cinched them just tight enough to prevent rotation, then stepped back without lowering the pistol.

The exchange had lasted only a few seconds.

What troubled him was not the speed. It was the familiarity.

Before Prague, he would have acted without naming any part of it. Distance. Balance. Distraction. Control. The sequence would have assembled itself and passed through him before conscious thought could slow it down.

Ten years of stonework had not erased that instinct. The skills remained. Rather than replacing them, his craft had just repurposed them. Assigned them to a different set of tools.

Nick had believed ten years of honest work had purged the past he wanted to forget. The last few minutes proved it had merely gone dormant. The old edges had not dulled nearly as much as he had allowed himself to believe.

Kate lay on her side with the chair still bound to her back. The man moving through the workshop wore Nick’s face and clothes, but she had never seen this version of him.

The deliberation was familiar. She had watched him bring the same concentration to stacking stone and laying brick. What unsettled her was the speed. He had anticipated every move her captor made and answered it without hesitation, as though his body remembered a sequence his mind no longer needed to consider.

Nick set the Glock on the far end of the workbench, beyond the leader’s reach. He grabbed a tungsten-tipped chisel from among the many arrayed above the worktable. The sharpest one.

Turning to Kate, he lifted her upright and gently peeled the tape from her mouth with one hand supporting the skin beneath it. Kate sighed with relief.

In the same motion, he checked her pupils, then the sides of her head, neck, and shoulders.

“Anything hit?”

“My shoulder…” She tested it carefully and winced. Suddenly recognizing how close that bullet had come, she added, “…by the chair.”

“Head?”

“No.”

“Neck?”

“No.” She looked up at the bullet hole in the ceiling, where dust continued to sift through the light. “Was that supposed to happen?”

“No.”

The answer brought a short, breathless laugh from her. It disappeared almost as soon as it came.

Nick cut the lower rope with the chisel, then the upper. Kate drew her arms forward slowly, working feeling back into her hands.

“You came,” she said.

“You texted.”

Her eyes remained on his face. “You knew I would tip the chair.”

“I knew you’d understand when to move.”

“You hoped I would.”

“Yes.”

“That’s less reassuring.”

“You moved.”

Kate wanted to say more but held back when she glanced at the man restrained against the workbench. There would be time to ask how Nick had done any of this—assuming he was willing to answer.

Blood ran from a shallow cut on the leader’s forehead, but his eyes were clear. He was no longer testing the restraints. That did not mean he had accepted them. It meant he understood they would not yield easily.

Nick searched him while Kate rubbed circulation back into her wrists. Two spare magazines. A folding knife. Additional restraints. More than Kate alone would have required.

He found a compact encrypted radio clipped beneath the vest. Nick had seen these before. It was powered, authenticated, and still connected to the team’s channel.

No wallet, identification, or personal effects. The clothing labels had been removed. Equipment serial numbers had been filed away or covered. This was not ordinary contractor discipline. Someone had prepared the team to leave nothing behind that could be traced.

With each item Nick removed, the leader watched his face rather than his hands—as though Nick’s reaction mattered more than anything the search might uncover.

Near the bottom of an inner pocket, Nick found a small silver token. It was heavier than a coin and worn smooth around the edge. One side was blank. The other carried a simple engraving: a circle with a single point cut precisely at its center.

He turned it once between his fingers.

The leader watched him.

“You recognize it,” Kate said.

Nick did not answer. The symbol was familiar, but familiarity was not the same as understanding. He had seen variations of it before Prague, back when symbols served as instructions, authentication, and warning. This one was close enough to stir memory and different enough to resist it.

Nick brought it closer to see whether it carried any other markings. He wondered whether it was genuine, altered, or intended to serve some other purpose. The uncertainty disturbed him more than the recognition itself.

The leader smiled faintly. “There you are.”

Nick looked at him. “Who sent you?”

The smile remained the leader’s only answer.

“Why take Kate?”

“To make sure you showed.”

“You had my property under observation. You knew my routine and my name. You didn’t need her to locate me.”

The leader said nothing.

Nick placed the token on the workbench beside the radio. Then it struck him. “This wasn’t an abduction. It was confirmation.”

Something shifted in the man’s expression. Barely enough to see. Enough for Nick.

Kate looked from one of them to the other. “Confirmation of what?”

The leader leaned as far as the restraints allowed and studied Nick with open satisfaction. He had lost two men, the hostage, and control of the room. None of it seemed to matter anymore.

Nick left Kate’s question unanswered. He kept his attention on the leader. “You were sent to test me.”

The leader’s smile widened.

“Who wanted the confirmation?”

The radio answered for him, emitting a sudden, sharp electronic chirp.

All three of them turned toward it.

A flattened voice came through the encrypted channel. “Team Three, report status.”

Nobody answered.

The green indicator continued to pulse beside the display. Whoever was transmitting waited several seconds before trying again.

“Team Three, confirm status.”

The leader’s grin extended.

Nick watched him instead of the radio. The man had not come expecting to leave with a prisoner. He had come expecting to deliver an answer.

The channel opened a third time.

“Team Three, report. Is Mason confirmed?”

Kate looked at the radio, then at Nick. The confusion in her face deepened when she saw the name register.

The old name moved through him like frost entering a hairline crack. It found the weakness because it had always been there. Ten years of walls, foundations, and ordinary work had covered it beneath layers of discipline and routine.

Covered was not the same as repaired.

The leader rested his forehead against the edge of the workbench and laughed once under his breath. He had lost the fight. The mission had succeeded anyway.

The last few minutes rearranged themselves in Kate’s mind. Nick’s combat ability. His recognition of the token. The leader’s satisfaction. Nick’s reaction to the name.

They all led to Mason.

Kate stared at him. Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Who’s Mason?”

Nick kept his eyes on the pulsing green light.

For a moment, he considered giving her no answer. That had once been easy. Compartmentalization. Need to know. Silence as a form of protection. Prague had taught him what those habits cost.

“Nick,” Kate insisted, “who’s Mason?”

He looked at Kate.

“Me.”

Now It’s Your Turn To Play!

AGENT DECISION:

Question: What will Nick do now that Kate knows he is Mason? (Select one)

• Tell Kate what Mason means.
• Secure the scene and get Kate somewhere safe.
• I’d rather find out in Chapter Four.

If choice is 3, ask “Why did you choose that?”

• I enjoy being surprised.
• I don’t want to stop reading.

[Continued in Chapter Four.]

Would you like to learn more about this Action Thriller Visual Novel Game? Click here to go to NickStello.com