Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
But my body is already moving.
I drop from the beam, still invisible, and land behind the man with the gun. His skull cracks against my fist before he even knows I’m there. The one beside him turns, confused, and I grab his face and squeeze until something gives way beneath my fingers and it all crumbles away, choking out his scream.
Too much force, an inner voice yells. You’re using too much force.
Good, I think, and I grin.
The darkness is singing now, a symphony of violence that drowns out everything else. Two more guards rush toward the sound, toward their fallen comrades, and I meet them with fists and fury. One goes down with a shattered jaw, nose, brain. The other I throw, like he weighs nothing at all, into a stack of shipping crates that collapse on top of him with a satisfying crash.
The bald man is screaming orders, but his men are panicking. They’re firing blind, bullets chewing up the air around an enemy they can’t see. I move through them like a scythe through wheat, breaking bones and ending their lives with mechanical efficiency.
She lied to you.
A man’s arm snaps in my grip like a twig.
She used you.
Another one drops, gasping, clutching his crushed windpipe.
She made you feel like a person, and it was all just pretend.
By the time I’m done, the warehouse floor is littered with bodies. Pretty sure all of them are dead.
And Mia is gone.
I catch a glimpse of her through the shattered loading dock—running, limping, disappearing into the night with someone else, a dark-haired woman I don’t recognize.
Good. You run along now, darlin’.
I’ll find you.
I find their rendezvous point in a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up and hover just outside of it, totally invisible, and listening. My enhanced hearing picks up everything—the hum of electronics, the distant wail of sirens, and the voices inside. There are three of them. Mia and two others.
A man’s voice, accented, furious says, “That wasn’t the plan, Mia. You were supposed to do recon, not start a bloody war.”
“I had a shot at the laptop, at the files.” Her voice is tight, pained. “I had to take it.”
“And look where that got you! You nearly died in there. I lost your feed for three minutes—three minutes, Mia. Thermal went to shit the second the shooting started. Too many heat signatures, too much chaos. I still don’t know what happened in there.”
“I handled it.”
“You got lucky.” A woman now, her voice sharp and clipped and Russian, or at least Slavic, probably the one who extracted her. “This isn’t Tehran. You don’t have deep cover backup this time. You have us, and we are not equipped to pull you out of a firefight with the Russian mob.”
Silence. Then Mia, quieter, says, “I’m sorry. I should have stuck to the plan.”
“Damn right you should have.” The man again. “Now we’ve got Kozlov’s people on high alert, Marsh knows someone’s onto him, and we still don’t have the files we needed. SOE is going to have our heads.”
Marsh. Wait a minute. Conrad Marsh?
What the hell does the CEO of Global Dynamix have to do with a warehouse full of Russian traffickers?
“Walk us through the extraction,” the woman says. “Did you leave anyone alive, any witnesses? Last I saw, you were running toward me.”
A pause. Too long.
“Things got…chaotic,” Mia says carefully. “Kozlov’s men started dropping. I don’t know if it was infighting, or if someone else hit the warehouse at the same time, but I saw my window and I took it.”
She’s lying. I can hear it in her voice—that slight hesitation, the way she’s choosing her words too precisely. She knows something and she’s not telling them.
Fuck. She knows it was me.
And she’s keeping it to herself.
“Infighting?” The man sounds skeptical. “In the middle of a firefight with an intruder?”
“I don’t know what it was, Bayo. I just know I might be hurt but I’m not dead, and I’d like to keep it that way.” An edge of finality in her tone. Subject closed.
The woman lets out a frustrated breath but doesn’t push. “Fine. We’ll debrief properly tomorrow when you’ve had medical attention. What about Vanguard? Have you heard from him?”
My chest tightens as I wait for her response.
“No.” Mia’s voice changes. Softer. Pained. “Not since…not for a few days.”
“Good. Keep it that way until we figure out what we’re dealing with. Now that we know what Global Dynamix and Marsh are capable of…well, it’s looking more likely that Vanguard is a weapon after all.”
I want to break through the window and ask them what they mean. What is Global Dynamix capable of? And why was Marsh involved with a Russian Mobster?
“Don’t say that,” Mia says, voice razor sharp. “We don’t know that.”
“We don’t know anything for certain, that’s the problem. But Mia…” The woman pauses. “If London decides he’s a threat, you know what happens. You know what you might have to do.”