Page 99 of One Last Stand

“Oh, not with you, darling. Her.” He nodded at London.

London stilled.

“You tell us the seed code or we beat her to death.” He looked at Igor. Nodded.

Igor slapped Ziggy. She slammed into the cushions even as her foot came out and kicked her attacker in the knee. He stepped back, cursed, and rebounded, his fist pulled back.

London leaped up, threw herself in front of Ziggy. “Stop!”

A thousand volts hit her back, stiffened her body, and every muscle contracted. She fell to the floor, paralyzed, her breath shucked out.

“That’s enough, Staz.”

The volts instantly stopped, but her muscles refused to recover, and she lay immobilized, pain clogging her breaths, her brain.

Ziggy called him a name in some language London didn’t know.

“You Black Swans are supposed to be invincible,” said a voice.

She knew that voice. It nudged something deep in the back of her brain, but she couldn’t . . . seem to . . .

Her breath came back with a whoosh, the paralysis shaking out of her limbs, which turned prickly and sharp. She lay on the floor, just breathing, fighting to get her strength back.

First rule of fighting: wait for an advantage. She’d been stupid, impulsive, and, well, so very London.

C’mon, Laney. Find your way back.

The man who’d spoken knelt down, and a hand pushed her over to her back.

And then she stared up at him.

A scar over his forehead, dark hair—she remembered thinking of him as handsome when she’d arrived at the chalet, before she knew he’d killed her handler. He wore a wool winter coat and a pair of leather gloves, and Ziggy breathed his name even as London tried to form it.

“Alan Martin. I should have known you were behind all this.”

As London watched, he stood, looked at Ziggy. “Miss Mattucci. Lovely as always. And tenacious. Oh, and bloody. My goodness, I hope you don’t lose a tooth.”

He stepped back, and Ziggy’s Igor hauled up London and set her down on the sofa again beside Ziggy.

Alan stepped back, reached out to shake Tomas’s hand. “Sorry it took so long for me to get here. What did I miss?”

“I was just asking Laney for her seed code.”

Alan took off his gloves, put them in his pocket. “Oh good. I hate to miss anything.” He undid his jacket and sat on the opposite sofa. Folded his hands.

Tomas glanced at him, just a hint of a frown, then got up. “Are you sure we need to make this difficult?”

London froze. He wouldn’t . . . She looked at Ziggy, her tight jaw, her dark eyes. And Ziggy looked back at her.

“Assurgo.”

Stand up. But . . . even as she stared into Ziggy’s eyes, she saw it.

Help was coming.

She nodded, and Ziggy closed her eyes as if steeling herself.

And then everything inside London turned to ice when Alan Martin said, softly, “Proceed.”

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