Night Shadow (5 page)

on the breeze.“Specifically a quarter mile from the National Palace

Museum.”

Lexi glanced at the building beyond the alley, with its enormous glass

skylights and four-story atrium brightly lit against the night sky. She

recognized the museum from pictures. “We’re on Taiwan?” She believed

him, but she was trying to buy time before she had to move.

She didn’t even flinch when something large ran over her right boot, but

just managed to bite back her scream of surprise. Lexi remained silently

propped against the wall, praying it would keep her upright a bit longer.

“Why?”

“There was a grand ball earlier celebrating the acquisition of a priceless

jadeite Tang horse.” He continued to visually scan the area. “Life-size.”

Thank God her equilibrium had started to return, and the accompanying

ringing in her ears had dissipated. “I read about it. It has a saddle and

bridle made of amber. Is someone trying to steal it?”
Join T-FLAC and see

the world. How freaking cool was this?

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Night Shadow

“Tangos are holding the guests hostage,” Alex said grimly. “Sixty-million-

dol ar ransom, or they blow the place to hel .”

Right. This was T-FLAC, not rinky-dink art thieves. These were terrorists.

Terrorists with exactly the same demands made in Moscow. “How much

time do we have?”

“Six hours, minus thirty-two minutes.”

“If they’re like the ones in Moscow, that means we can count out five of

those hours, if that, which leaves precisely twenty-eight minutes until go

time.” Lexi pushed away from the wall, automatically removing her Glock

from the hip holster. She didn’t need to see it. She’d practiced

fieldstripping the weapon in the dark until she had it down to eight

seconds. From the pressure exerted by the fully compressed clip spring

she confirmed a ful magazine. Her heart skipped several beats as

adrenaline surged. “Exactly the same MO.”

“Exactly. Yeah?” he said, clearly speaking into his headset. He listened for

several seconds. Then said “Fuck” quietly under his breath. “Reported.” He

was speaking to her this time. “A hundred and ten confirmed deaths in

Moscow. Tangos released LZ17, then blew the railway station to hell and

gone. The hostages we liberated were infected before we got them out.

Dammit.”

She hated to do it, but Lexi made a mental note to report that far from

remaining at the scene to liberate the hostages, Alex had cut out early,

and had been napping back at the safe house while his team members did

what they could. She hated to even think it, but possibly, if Alex had

remained at the station, there might not have been any deaths
to
report.

Possibly his help would have gotten the people out before the coronavirus

was released.

“You and the team managed to get seventy-seven percent of the people

out.” She had to credit him with that, at least.

“Twenty-three percent of them
died,
” he said tightly. “God
damn
it. This is

overkil , and doesn’t make any frigging sense. This is the same

frankenvirus used in the London subway last week. Same as Paris

yesterday. Where the hel are these people getting this shit? Who’s

making it? Who are they? What the fuck do they want?”

“Not the six mil, obviously,” she responded, even though she knew the

questions were rhetorical. “They aren’t even making a pretense of

waiting.” It wasn’t a
frankenvirus.
“LZ17 is that new, lethal coronavirus,

right? Similar in effect and composition to SARS, but ten times more

deadly.” Really, he should call a spade a spade. Was he going to put

frankenvirus
in his report? He was irreverent enough.
Probably.

She’d boned up on it during her flight, the
real
flight. On a plane. Not that

there was much intel on how to defeat the new designer virus, just details

on the gory effects. She caught the faint movement as he nodded.

“Impossible to detect until people present with horrific symptoms, and it’s

too late to treat.” Lexi didn’t have a very active imagination, but even she

wanted to shudder at the idea of bleeding from every orifice while writhing

in agony. Mental y pul ing up her big-girl panties, she glanced at the

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Night Shadow

brightly lit building beyond the dark alley, then back at Alex. “Are we

going in alone?”

He tilted his left wrist to look at his watch. “Psi team rendezvousing here

in . . . sixteen seconds.”

Faster than a regular team, but stil . Did every op have to be manned by

wizards
? Regular operatives managed to do their job with skill and smarts,

without having to resort to hocus-pocus. “By which time, everyone could

be dead.”

“By which time, everyone could be dead, yeah.”

She wanted to rub the chill from her arms. But under her clothing the

LockOut suit kept her comfortable. Almost a second skin, it maintained an

even body temperature of sixty-seven degrees. LockOut, invented by T-

FLAC science guy Jake Dolan, was a modern miracle of fabrication and

engineering. It was practically indestructible, kept out water and fire, was

impervious to nicks and cuts. It was even self-healing if something did

manage to tear it. If one
wore
it.

The injury on her shoulder itched just to remind her that it wouldn’t
be

there if she’d fol owed the rules as she was supposed to. She shook her

head in disgust and tuned back in to Alex’s version of briefing. “How many

guests?”

“Seven-fifty on the official guest list. Three hundred assorted staff.”

Silence throbbed as they both considered what was happening inside the

museum right that second. “The displays are rotated once every three

months.” Lexi said quietly, now preternaturally alert and itching for action.

“Which means sixty thousand pieces can be viewed in a year. It would

take someone
twelve years
to see them all. And in less than an hour a

group of nut jobs wants to blow up over a thousand people and all those

priceless artifacts?”

“Apparently so.” He lifted his hand, using one finger to brush a snagged

strand of her bangs off her eyelashes. He did it so absently, so casually,

that she was shocked by her visceral reaction to the light touch.

She blinked hard.
Focus, Stone.
It was the chil y breeze making her entire

body shudder, not his inappropriate physical contact. “You seem

extremely calm about it.”

“I’m not. But going off half-cocked isn’t going to achieve anyth—Good

evening, ladies,” he said easily to the four men who suddenly appeared

out of thin air. “Which of you has the schematic of the building? Daklin?”

Lord. Asher Daklin. A regular T-FLAC operative, although there wasn’t

anything
regular
about him. Like Alex Stone, Daklin’s very presence

commanded attention. Six feet plus of lean, broad-shouldered male with

attitude. Lexi had supplied research on some of his ops. He’d always been

polite, but guarded. And seemed solitary, not chatting to anyone after

he’d requested information.

His hair was shaggy and way too long. The light and dark strands

fluttering against his strong face in the fitful breeze should have made him

look effeminate; instead, the movement of the strands made his face

appear harsher and even more male. His fal en-angel mouth curved in a

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Night Shadow

faint smile as his glance swept by her, paused as he tried to put her in

context, then moved back to Alex. One brow lifted in faint question.

“We should shield,” a swarthy man with a hooked nose and the eyes of a

saint said softly, he too glancing briefly at Lexi. She recognized him as

one of Alex’s team from the file she’d been given to study on the flight to

Paris. Ruben Ginsberg. A wizard.

Lexi had no idea if they were “shielded” or not, since everyone looked the

same as they had seconds before. Maybe shielding meant no one else

could see or hear them?

Barely two inches over five feet and rail thin, almost emaciated, the

Chinese man in his mid-sixties standing next to Ginsberg produced a 3-D

holographic image of the building cut into cross sections with a

surprisingly graceful flourish of his hand. Lexi had to admit wizards had

the coolest toys.

This had to be Li-Liang Lu. Also a wizard, he looked as innocuous in the

flesh as he had in his dossier.

The sixth member of the team was Finar Kiersted, a stocky wizard with

piercing light blue eyes, and—despite having just celebrated his thirty-

ninth birthday—a brush of pure white hair, cut military short. He looked as

though he’d been chiseled out of a block of unyielding stone.

Four wizards and two regs.

The shimmering blue image hovered in the air between them as they

circled the hologram to see the best way in. She had a strong feeling

she’d be the one standing in the cold outside. She couldn’t teleport any of

the hostages, so she was no use to them. But then, neither was Daklin.

But
he
was here because he was a bomb disposal expert, so they’d

probably take him inside with them.

No complaints from her. She was here. That’s all that mattered.

Experience would eventually get her closer to the action. Determined to

absorb everything she could and learn from these experienced operatives,

Lexi stepped in a little closer, memorizing the hallways and air

conditioning vents. Her photographic memory would come in handy if any

of the men became turned around once inside the building.

Her heart pounded, and her chest ached with suppressed excitement.

Taipei.
Amazing.

She looked like a frigging daffodil in a cactus patch, Alex thought,

suddenly annoyed that he’d had to bring her along. This wasn’t

babysitting anymore. It wasn’t as though he didn’t work with women in

the field. He’d been teamed with several female operatives. His favorite

was Cooper. A crack shot and a dependable operative.

He never gave her sex a moment’s thought, which was probably a good

thing since AJ’s husband, Kane Wright, was a friend. But having Lexi

here—Shit. Nothing he could do about it. Alex had to trust she was as

wel -trained as the rest of them. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be here now.

She was just one of the guys.

A rookie.

With big gray eyes.

And bee-stung lips.

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Night Shadow

Hel .

“Daklin, walk us through the lower floor where the event’s being held.

Make it fast.” A buzz indicated a cal on the sat phone hooked up to his

headset. Alex touched his earpiece.

“Make it fast,” he told his new control, a woman by the name of El icott.

“Streaming you surveil ance footage from the scene,” she said in a

naturally husky voice. She sounded sexy as hell, but was probably sixty

and a chain-smoking grandmother. Or a man using a voice synthesizer.

The image of the hostage situation came through his ocular implant and

he projected it against a nearby Dumpster for the others to see.

The wel -dressed patrons of the arts had been corralled like cattle to the

far end of an exhibit area. Several glass cases and their contents were

smashed on the floor. The life-sized Tang horse, the jadeite translucent,

the amber saddle and bridle rich and fiery, stood in the middle of the

space, its head twisted, its massive ears pricked forward as if listening to

the terrified cries of the very people who’d come to admire its beauty.

Five men in tuxes and a dozen women in evening gowns sprawled on the

floor. Even projected against the flaking paint of a Dumpster the blood

was unmistakable. And no mistaking they were dead. Exsanguination.

They’d bled out. Shit.

The tangos, forty or fifty of them, dressed in the same black garb as the

bunch in Moscow, held the group at bay with MAC-10s.

“We’re about to go in,” Alex told El icott impatiently as he fol owed

Daklin’s pointing finger through the maze of corridors and back hallways

to the exhibit hal where the hostages were being held. He and the three

other wizards would shimmer inside and start snatching the hostages in

groups. Daklin would defuse any bombs. Lexi would coordinate their

efforts from outside.

Invisible, they’d teleport directly into the middle of the crowd as they’d

done in Moscow. There were four of them. Taking twenty hostages each,