Page 52 of Wired Target

“I am stabilizing his leg.I must get the Master to somewhere safe where the authorities can’t take him.”

Sophie huffed a breath.She’d deal with Connor’s ridiculousness later, when Frank was safe.

“Bill, Clement.Help this young man carry my friend Connor into the guesthouse and look after him there.He’s refused treatment.We’ll deal with his medical situation ourselves for the moment.Hopefully he doesn’t have internal injuries.”

She glanced over at Lei; her friend was in a huddle with the officers as they put up caution tape and cordoned off Pim Wat’s body.None of them were paying attention to her and the two fallen men.

Bill, Clement, and Feirn picked up Connor as carefully as they could and carried him back inside the estate, disappearing from view.

The long-awaited ambulance at last roared up, and its crew surrounded Frank.“This is my father, Ambassador Frank Smithson.Please see that he gets the very best care.He has leukemia but hasn’t begun treatment.He’s likely been poisoned and needs immediate hydration and a catheter,” Sophie said.

“How do you know he might be poisoned?”one of the paramedics asked.

“I have experience with the person who injured him,” Sophie said bitterly, staring at the body lying in the road.

The EMTs loaded her father into the ambulance and roared away.She’d follow as soon as she made sure Connor was okay.

Pim Wat was dead.

Why didn’t she feel any better?

Yes, Pim Wat was her mother, but that hadn’t mattered in a real way for years.

Maybe this odd sense of disbelief was because she had become used to a constant nagging fear of an attack that had finally happened.Removing the threat had left a void.

But still.She needed to see the body up close.

Sophie stood, dusted herself off, and headed over to the crime scene.

31

Pierre Raveaux stared at the flashing red indicator light on a white dome in the middle of the ceiling of Pim Wat’s office.The light had turned on the minute he touched the computer’s power button.“Alarm activated!We have to get out of here!”he yelled.

Rab and Sam looked up from where they were checking through the costumes hanging in one of the armoires—but before they could move, the dome exploded with a burst of light and a roar.

Their outlines, black against red, were burned onto Raveaux’s retinas.

Behind the heavy desk and in front of the windows, Raveaux flew backward, flung by the force of the blast.He barely had time to raise his arms to block his face as he hit the heavy blind; the window behind it broke outward as he was heaved over the sill and out into the courtyard in a shower of flying glass and splintering wood, the desk tumbling over and beyond him.Raveaux landed on the accordion-like blind as the entire window and its covering hit the ground.

All was darkness.

A weight on his chest.

Raveaux dragged in a breath; a million ice picks stabbed his throat and chest.He used his diaphragm to pant shallowly instead.

Darkness filled with floating red spots.He couldn’t see.

Pulses of pain, an orchestra just beginning to tune up, jangled along his nerves and reached his brain with an ongoing thump of heavy bass.

A ringing louder than any alarm filled his ears; there was no other sound.

Raveaux curled his fingers; his hands were filled with glass.Shards penetrated as soon as he moved, so he stopped.

His eyelids were stuck shut, or maybe his eyes were gone entirely.There was no way to tell.

But he was alive.That was something.

“Sam.Rab.”Forming the words hurt; his lips were lacerated.If he was able to make the sound of their names, he couldn’t hear it.

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