Page 33 of Shadow of the Moon

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Zed was dying.

There was a bullet hole through his right upper chest that was fatal. This far out of town, there would be no squad to save him. At this point, he would need to have a surgeon inside the bar with an equipped operating room in the back in order to live.

The man’s eyes were a startling shade of bright green, something she hadn’t noticed before, and they were frantic. “You have to check my daughter. She doesn’t know anything about what’s going on. Please,” he gurgled, blood flowing from his mouth.

“What does Cole have planned, Zed? Help me save lives.”

“Help my daughter,” he pleaded.

“Tell me what he has planned and I’ll save a bunch of daughters. And yours as well. I promise.”

Zed dragged in a breath, and it looked difficult. “He’s got these ideas,” he said, wheezing.

“What are his targets, Zed?”

“Ri-Riverview Preparatory school, the Academy of the Holy Cross, the Martin Luther King Jr. Library, and more I can’t remember. Children and women. It’s wrong. There’s a maternity building.”

The man blinked, staring straight up at the sky, and Amberly knew she was running out of time. “Are there explosive devices in the phones?”

Zed nodded. “Just some of us got them. And he made us give them to our family. Leverage.”

“Who is the little girl at the school in Fort Collins?”

Rocking his head from side to side on the gravel, he grimaced in pain.

“Devlin!” she screamed, praying he was okay. This information was too important to leave. The country could literally depend upon this man’s dying words.

“Zed, who is the little girl?” she demanded.

His hand had fallen to his side, and she didn’t know what to do for him. “I’ll help your daughter,” she promised.

His eyes flickered. “The girl is the granddaughter of his contact at the CIA, the one that got us out… He wanted leverage, just in case…”

Zed’s hand lifted and he handed her his phone. “One one six four.”

Those green, green eyes closed for the last time and his hand fell away, the cell phone skittering in the gravel. She checked his carotid to be sure and there was no more beat.

“Fuck…” Amberly breathed, sitting back on her heels, then reached out to snatch up the phone. She didn’t have time to mope or look at it, because Devlin was out there in the night somewhere.

Pushing to her feet, she shoved the phone in her pocket and took off running toward where she’d heard the last gunshots. People were peering out of the bar. “Someone call 911,” she yelled.

Gun in hand, she pushed on, looking and listening for any sounds of fighting or altercation. She didn’t hear anything. “Devlin?”

“Here,” she heard, and rounded the front corner of a van. Dev was leaning against the quarter panel, looking dazed. Blood covered him at the midsection, but when she started digging at his shirt, he pushed her away. “It’s not mine,” he told her. “It’s his. I think I’m fine, other than a knock to the head.”

Gripping his chin in her hand, she looked up into his dazed eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, my balance is shit, though. He seriously rung my bell.”

Hoisting his arm over her shoulders, Amberly led him back across the lot to their car. Zed’s body lay where he’d died, and she thought she could hear sirens way in the distance. She wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Digging in Devlin’s hip pocket, she found the key fob and unlocked the car. She guided Devlin to the passenger side and dropped him down into the seat, then stretched the seat belt across his chest. Circling the hood of the car, she climbed into the driver’s seat, reaching for her own seatbelt.

She tore out of the lot, tossing Zed’s cell phone into the back seat. They needed to look at it and get it the fuck out of the car as soon as possible. She was sure she could get into his Google and track his movements, and hopefully that would tell her exactly where Cole Regent was.

Amberly hadto pull over once to allow Devlin to puke, then they were on the road again. They needed to get to Zed’s daughter. Devlin had a concussion, but she doubted he would allow her to take him to a hospital. They had too much to do.

Devlin reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, then started swiping through screens. His eyes were squinted, and she had a feeling he was in a huge amount of pain right now. “How did you get the concussion?”

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