Sunfail (15 page)

“If you insist,” the man said, taking his time to aim square at the center of Jake’s chest.

He fired again. The trigger clicked on an empty clip as he squeezed it again and again.

“Looks like it’s your lucky day,” the killer said, reaching into his pocket for a spare ammo clip.

Jake grabbed the handlebar of his messenger bike and whipped it around, straddling it. Head down, he pedaled away fast, heart slamming against his chest. He couldn’t believe he was still alive—even as another shot tore into the bodywork of the car beside him. Whatever gods, devils, or angels saddled with watching over him were working overtime. He wasn’t about to make their job any harder than it already was. He wove between the stalled cars, keeping as much metal between him and the killer as he could.

There was a towering office building across the street, one of those metal-and-glass monstrosities, with a huge portico that left the sidewalk completely in shadow. The portico was supported by a dozen pillars. Jake aimed for them, jumping off the bike just before it slammed into the glass doors, then ditched it where it wouldn’t be immediately noticeable from the street. He hunkered down and hid behind one of the wide metal pillars, expecting to hear the killer’s voice goad,
Come out, come out, wherever you are.

He barely dared to breathe in the silence. He hated that the city was so utterly bereft of life. Even the slightest sound would betray his hiding place.

The car drove past a few seconds later, moving at full speed this time. There were two men in the front seats.

He wasn’t falling for the same trick twice.
Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice and I’m as dumb a fuck as George Dubya.

He didn’t move. A minute passed. Two. Three. Four. Time was dragging desperately slowly. Five. And he still hadn’t heard a sound. He risked a glance around the pillar. There was no sign of either of them.

He stepped out of the shadows, looking back down the street, and saw the gleam of the killer’s abandoned motorcycle lying in the middle of the road. It confirmed what he knew—the killers were in the car. Whether they were hunting him or not, he didn’t know. Right now, he didn’t care. He needed to keep operating under the assumption that they were. Which meant moving fast, thinking two, maybe three steps ahead if he could.

The old motorcycle was a step up from the bike, and given the complete clusterfuck that was modern electronics right now, the odds of them having GPS or some other tracking device on it were next to none. He walked across to the motorcycle, lifting it upright, ready to kick-start it, only to change his mind.
Do unto them as they would do unto you,
he thought, grinning for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long.

He had a plan. It was a stupid plan, which meant it might just work.

He wheeled the motorcycle toward the relay station’s doors.

The killers would assume he’d run. It was the obvious thing to do. What wasn’t obvious was breaking into the relay station they’d just abandoned. It was counterintuitive. Instead of running away from trouble he was running into the heart of it. Sure, they’d done whatever it was they’d set out to do in there, just like they had in the stock exchange, and they’d murdered their team to make sure there was no gingerbread trail for anyone to follow, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something back there that would help him make sense out of what was happening.

There was safety in the unexpected. Given that he was onto his second life now, he didn’t want to waste it by being predictable.

They hadn’t bothered locking the door behind them. That was the kind of arrogance these people were operating with. It was a solid steel fire door, no windows or panels of any sort. If they’d taken a second to be sure it had latched behind them he’d have been shit out of luck.

He wheeled the motorcycle inside, hoping its absence would complete the illusion, and closed the door behind him. If they thought he’d taken it they would assume he was miles away by now, even if they hadn’t heard its engine roar. The brain would make its own connections, buying into the smoke and mirrors.

He had no idea what to expect inside, but it couldn’t be any worse than what was outside—seven dead men in the back of a minivan—could it?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FINN STRETCHED. HER MUSCLES PROTESTED, each vertebrae cracking audibly as she arched her back. She’d lost track of how long she’d been hunched over the computer. She always ended up working in the same unnaturally cramped position with her legs curled up under the chair and crossed at the ankles, leaning so far forward her breath could have fogged the monitor if it got any colder in the office.

She pushed herself up out of the chair and made her way toward the door. It was still daylight, but not for much longer. She was hungry. She hadn’t realized just how hungry until she’d stopped working. She got like that when she went into the zone, obsessed with what she was doing. She’d only stopped now because her head was banging and her vision was starting to blur with that premigraine darkening around the edges. She needed to eat, so she ventured down to the break room.

One of her colleagues was fiddling with coffee pods when she walked in.

“Hey, you. The rumor is you landed some cushy new gig. Did I hear scuba diving?” Elise Bennington handled early Mesopotamian research for the department. She was ferociously intelligent and wore Velma glasses to hide the fact that she was a definite Daphne on the Scooby scale of hotness. She was, of course, Tom’s favorite, mainly because she humored him and played the game every bit as well as he did when it came to inappropriate comments in the workplace.

“Me and water, can you imagine?”

“Bikini all packed then?”

Finn barked out a short laugh. She went over the fridge and pulled out a cold Coke Zero, then grabbed a banana and an apple from the ever-full fruit basket. It was almost a nutritious meal. It certainly covered at least one of the basic food groups. “It’s not as adventurous as it sounds,” she told Elise. “I’m analyzing a bunch of symbols marking ruins they found just off the coast of Cuba. It’s all video chat stuff.”

Elise saluted her with a stiff black coffee. “Nice. A dig you don’t even have to leave your office for. Like I said, cushy.” She took a sip, then smirked. Finn knew that look. It was the same one a predator wore as it homed in on hapless prey. “And speaking of your office, who, pray tell, was that absolutely fucking gorgeous man you were entertaining? I almost felt my womb contract and I was fifty feet away. That’s one dangerous man.”

“He’s all yours,” Finn replied, looking anywhere but at Elise, which of course just encouraged her to tease some more. Jake was still a sore spot. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t called back. She couldn’t believe she’d actually thought he might. But that was her all over: gullible. “He’s a friend of a friend. No one special. We met at the holiday party last year.”

She watched Elise’s eyes widen as she got the reference. “Oh, fuck me, he’s
that
one? Well Jesus Christ, woman, if that’s the guy who got your panties unbunched, all I can say is good fucking taste, girlie. I’d be all over that thing like a dose of chlamydia.”

“Elise!” Finn laughed.

“Tell me you disagree. I mean, you went there, not me, I’m just giving you the Elise Bennington seal of approval. So what did he want? Round two? You can’t tell me he just stopped by to chat, I’m not buying that. I want the gossip. Make it juicy. I need to live vicariously through your slutiness,” Elise rambled on. “And you know me, I’m a dog with a boner—and yes, I went there. So make it good.”

“He wasn’t here for me,” Finn told her.

“Well that’s a disappointment.”

“You know what? Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“Best way to get over a bad one-night stand is to get under a good one-night stand,” Elise said, grinning. “Fuck him. Or, you know, don’t. Alas, I must love you and leave you, which is rather apropos, given the whole tall, dark, and handsome thing. I’ll catch you later, okay? You, me, a big old tub of Ben & Jerry’s and we’ll set the world straight.”

“It’s a date,” Finn agreed. “Now get out of here before Tom turns up.”

“Laters, babe,” Elise said, and was gone. That woman was a phenomenon. Finn stopped short of calling her a natural disaster, though she often left a trail of devastation in her wake.

As Finn peeled the skin from her banana, a shadow crossed her vision. She glanced up expecting to see Tom there. It wasn’t Tom.

A man walked down the hall toward her. He’d just turned the corner that led back to her office, one of only three down there.

It wasn’t exam or term paper time, so there was no reason for any undergrads to visit her. She didn’t recognize him. Tall, slim, moved like an athlete, easy and graceful. Not exactly good-looking, certainly not in the world according to Elise Bennington, but distinctive. He had
arresting
features. That was the only word she could think of to describe him. Strong and sharp bones, dusky skin, and dark hair that looked almost brassy in strip lights, like burnished metal. Central American, maybe Salvadoran. He was too old to be a student, at least an undergrad, and wasn’t wearing the obligatory man-bag/backpack they all wore these days. He wasn’t dressed like a student either. His clothes were tailored. Actually, he looked like he belonged in an ad for a casino or some fancy ski resort. He certainly didn’t look at home in the dank halls of academia.

“Can I help you?” Finn asked as he approached, thinking that maybe he had something to do with the research project. He looked the part, projecting an aura of wealth.

He looked up with a dark, intense gaze, then brushed right by her, picking up speed as he hit the stairwell.

“Hey! You! Wait a minute!” Finn started to follow him, but he was already through the door.

Aren’t I just Miss Fucking Popular today. First Jake and now this one. I see a good-looking guy, he sees me, and he bolts.

Shaking her head and laughing at her own grim humor, she headed back to her office. The door was ajar.

She’d locked it. She knew she had, it was habitual. She didn’t want to set foot inside, expecting to find that it had been trashed like in some cheesy movie, papers everywhere, desk overturned, her chair lying on its side, her computer a smoking heap.

But paranoia aside, everything looked fine so she left the door open behind her. Finn put the Coke Zero on her desk and sank back into her chair ready to finish her feast.

It took her a moment to realize the angle of the monitor was off. It had been moved. It was only a few degrees, but it meant too much light reflected on the screen. She readjusted the monitor.

Her first thought, and not a very comforting one, was that the guy had been in here rooting around for something. What could he want with her or her computer? There was nothing exactly espionage-worthy about the new gig, but who knew what got into the heads of otherwise sensible people? Money made people do strange things.

Maybe he was some kind of treasure hunter who’d got wind of the dive and wanted to take a look at the photographs?

One stranger in the hall and a door that hadn’t latched properly and she was envisioning all sorts of grand conspiracies playing out like something from
Tomb Raider
, only she was no Lara Croft, and as far as excitement went this would make a pretty tame level in the game.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHEN SHE AWOKE, the thought of checking in to one of the roadside hotels for a shower had crossed her mind, but they were all full of commuters who hadn’t been able to make it home for the night. Even if there had been a spare room, there were too many people who might remember her. She didn’t like being remembered.

Instead, she stole a candy bar from the parking lot’s nonfunctional vending machine and got back on the road.

And now here she stood in the heart of Paternoster Square, looking up at the eight-story building that housed the London Stock Exchange. Though it was a clear and unseasonably warm night, with soft moonlight blanketing the square, it was completely quiet. This place wasn’t a shortcut to anywhere. There was no reason for people to pass through on their way to somewhere else, especially at night. There was no crowd of protective camouflage for her to hide within.

There were guards, of course, and an array of security measures that slammed down into place the moment a threat materialized.

She figured she’d just have to ride her luck.

Sophie had learned a long time ago that the best way to gain entrance anywhere you didn’t belong was to act like you did. People were inherently trusting. They expected you to be who you appeared to be.

If you tried to skulk along, head down, clinging to shadows, you were basically telegraphing a subliminal message to everyone who did see you:
I don’t belong here, remember me.
Her primary concern right now though was that the wrong people had beaten her here. She didn’t have a choice. She needed to get inside.

Sophie strode across the plaza, past the column with its gold flame–filled copper urn.

The stock exchange’s first floor was two stories tall and jutted out from the rest of the building. There was a colonnaded overhang dwarfing its arched windows and doors.

Sophie moved through the shadows without anyone shouting at or shooting her. So far so good. That didn’t mean they weren’t watching.

The wide glass doors were locked, but she’d come prepared. She pulled a lockpick gun from her go bag and inserted the muzzle into the bottom set of locks, then mirrored the move with the top locks. The gun made short work of the standard key locks by pushing different picks forward until they hit the right combination to trip the tumblers. It wasn’t rocket science. The locks were an antiquated deterrent; the real security was the sophisticated alarm system, which on any other day would have taken a team of master thieves to beat. Today, the same sophisticated alarm system had been rendered impotent by the blackout, leaving the place vulnerable. It was all part of Alom’s master plan, and better than mass murder, which was a very real alternative.