Page 32 of Shadow of the Moon

Zed was walking out the door, head down, phone to his ear. They followed along behind, but back a little. They could have been right behind the man, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed because he was pleading with Cole on the other end.

“Do you think the daughter is in danger?” Amberly whispered.

“Definitely. The message he sent her said put the phone in the yard. It seems like an incredibly small explosive device, but if they have it to their ear, I suppose it wouldn’t have to be big.”

“That’s horrific.”

They watched Zed cross the lot to his daughter’s blue car, still talking on the phone. The parking lot lights had come on, sending out weak light, but it was easy enough to see Zed lean against the side of the car. The conversation was mostly quiet, but at one point he burst out, “There was nothing I could do!”

Then they heard him apologize profusely for yelling. There was a beat of silence, then Zed started to plead. “Please, Cole, don’t do this. We’ve known each other a long time and you know I’ll back any play you make, but you can’t hurt my daughter. The Russians didn’t want to deal for the money we offered them. I can’t do anything about that.”

Dev pulled out his phone and found Charley’s number. He typed off a quick text and added Zed’s address as well as their own. He didn’t know if anything could be done, but he would try. An innocent teenage girl had no business dying for her father’s misdeeds.

Then he paged through his phone to find the recording app. He pulled up the last recording, taken nine minutes ago, and hit the white play button on the app. Glancing around the parking lot, he made sure it was quiet, other than Zed pleading a dozen cars away, and he shaded the light of the phone with his hand.

“We have everything you need on your list,” the woman said, her voice heavily accented and tinny from the app. “But the price has gone up. Three million.”

“What,” Zed hissed. “You said two million four days ago. That’s what I have available.”

“Yes, but that was before your boss started drawing attention to himself. He’s supposed to be dead, yet, here you are. There is blood in the water, and we are taking a risk by even talking to you.”

“No one knows what he’s doing yet,” Zed argued.

“That’s not what we heard. There was a meet in Chicago with an informant from your camp.”

“What? Who?”

“That we don’t know. But it was messy. Now the CIA is looking at us again.”

“That’s not my problem. Just because you’re getting greedy...”

That was when the punch happened and the noise went crazy. Dev hit the pause button and put the phone away.

“So, what are we doing?” Amberly hissed, leaning close.

“Obviously, Zed is important to Cole. Zed probably knows exactly where Cole is and what he’s planning. If we could interrogate him, and then stash him somewhere…”

“I can call Brown, see if he can send a team.”

Dev looked at Amberly, and he saw the reservation in her expression. Even she knew that was a reach.

Dev shrugged. “If they know they have a high-value target coming in, it might flush out the ones trying to cover everything up. Somebody has an agenda that agrees with Cole’s. ”

She nodded, looking worried. “Let’s get what we can out of him.”

They turned toward Zed, who was still pleading with Cole. It was pretty humiliating to listen to. Guns in hand, they crouched and began to move in.

That was when the plan went to hell. Out of the darkness, a car revved and tires squealed. Dev thought they were the targets, but when the car suddenly flipped on its lights, he realized Zed was the target. It had to be the Russians. Then they heard the subtle thwop thwop of a silenced weapon. Both of Zed’s arms flung out as he flew back, into the gravel of the lot and disappeared behind a car.

Bracing his own weapon on the top of a truck bed, Dev focused on the flash of taillights as the driver spun the wheel and gassed it through the lot. It wasn’t his rifle, but the Beretta did the job. He heard the bullets hit the car, and he thought he might have heard someone cry out. Had he gotten the driver?

Dev was racing after the car before he even realized what he was doing, firing constantly, and when the mag emptied, he slammed in the second one. The headlights of the car spun wildly before it slammed into the ass end of a pick-up truck, where it stopped. Dev crouched, using cover to get close to the vehicle. He could hear the man’s accented voice, pleading with someone to get up. “Alina, baby, get up. Alina.”

Dev crept forward, and even from ten feet away, he could see that the woman with the beautiful red hair would not be waking again. The man seemed to recognize this at the same time, because he looked up with fury in his eyes. When he saw Dev standing in front of the car, he immediately lifted a weapon from the seat and fired.

The closest cover was the Russian’s car, so he dove down in front of the car’s front bumper. The Russian continued to fire until the weapon clicked empty, then Dev heard him push the door open.

Fuck… he did not want to have to fight the over-muscled thug. Rolling, he looked beneath the car for the man’s feet, and fired. Crying out, the big man stumbled, but he still managed to reach Dev. With a lunging punch, the guy damn near knocked him out. Dev still had hold of his weapon, though. Angling it up, he pulled the trigger. Then pulled it again and again, until the massive Russian stopped moving.

Shoving his body to the side, Dev allowed himself to breathe for a moment, before sitting up. The world tilted crazily and he gagged, wondering if the fucker had given him a concussion with that single punch. Sparkles spun around him, and he dragged in oxygen.

Amberly was calling for him. He could hear her and he knew he needed to get up.

“Come on, asshole,” he muttered. “Get moving!”

Bracing a hand on the car’s front bumper, he shoved to his feet. Then he had to stand there a minute as the world settled around him. He was nauseated as fuck, but he moved his feet.

Amberly had to be okay.

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