Page 30 of Sublime Target

“Wait, where are you going?”

As he turned, something extended from his right hand—a thin black metal cable of some sort. Clarissa stared in horrified fascination as the cable shot toward the concrete tiles of the rooftop.

Clink.

Suddenly, metal claws extended from the cable, anchoring it securely in the concrete.

Jerik moved toward the edge.

No, it can’t be…

Too late, she understood that the cable was the very thing he was going to use to abseil off the damn building.

But how?

They were almost forty floors up, for god’s sake.

And there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Nothing at all.

“Please don’t kill anyone, Jerik,” she called out, feeling rather helpless.

“As you wish.” He raised a hand in a lazy salute.

Then he was gone, leaping over the glass balustrade, the cable disappearing with him.

Good thing the balustrade was made from ultra-strong fullerene glass, so it didn’t shatter. The cable sawed at it, though, making an indent in the top edge of the glass.

Clarissa sighed and made a mental note to log a job with maintenance.

Then she made a dash for the elevator, and the few seconds it took to reach the ground floor felt like an eternity.

Infuriating as the pink paint bomb might be, there was no way she was going to let this alien run amok in a street full of protestors.

Not out the front of her tower.

THIRTEEN

Clarissa’s heart pounded like a war drum as she rode the elevator down to the ground floor.

Her thoughts were filled with panic.

What on earth was going on outside?

She prayed Jerik hadn’t gone and done anything too extreme. The protesters were a nuisance, but they didn’t deserve to get beaten up over some stupid prank.

And she had no doubt the Kordolian could very easily beat them up.

He would be a wolf amongst sheep.

The elevator’s descent only took seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Clarissa burst out of the doors, not caring that she was covered in specks of painty gloop.

Nor did she pay much attention to Bea as she swept past her friend at the reception desk.

“Wait, Clarissa, where are you going? You can’t go out there now. There’s a full-on protest happening in the street! Wait… did you… what’s that in your hair?”

“Don’t worry about the pink stuff,” Clarissa called over her shoulder as she bypassed the hapless security guards, reaching the front entrance.

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