Page 71 of Edge of Secrets

“Dunc! Hold on! Don’t just?—”

I killed the phone and took off running. Glad for whatever instinct had prompted me to put on brown and olive drab. Her signal had been stationary for twenty minutes. Plenty of time to hurt her, if that was their intent.

I felt cold, my emotions flatlined. A virtual figure in a video game, sent out to earn points, defeat goblins, gargoyles, basilisks, to defeat the evil sorcerer, if I scored enough points and made no wrong moves. But in the video game, the player’s life wouldn’t be gutted if he fucked up. There would be no “Game Over” flashing on the screen. No invitation to try his luck again.

I had one chance. One. I hoped.

I ran onward, darting from bush to tree until the building came into view—and then the car. I hoped there were no infrared alarms, but I doubted there would be. This struck me as an improvised, last-minute snatch. This place was makeshift. Not their turf.

I hoped.

The building looked like an abandoned, crumbling barn. I spotted the first sentry and sank down into the bushes, recognizing the tall Black guy from Lafayette. I dropped to my belly and slithered around him, keeping beneath his line of vision. When I spiraled in closer, the guy was turned, pissing against a tree.

I leaped up behind him. The guy spun around, dick still in his hand. He sucked in air to yell, and took the heel of my boot to the point of his chin. Crunch.

He toppled, eyes rolled back, hit the tree and slid to the ground on his ass, slumped over, pants still open.

Voices. I followed them, slithering toward the hushed murmur in the clearing around the barn. It was the blond dickhead from Lafayette, smoking a cigarette and talking to a stocky, shorter guy. The blond had bruises beneath both eyes.

I crept closer, recognizing his reedy, whining tone before I could make out the words. I pulled out a couple of drugged throwing stars.

“... with this kind of shit! It ain’t worth the fuckin’ money to get treated like fuckin’ dogshit,” he bitched. “All I’m saying is, they better let me take my turn with the bitch after John works her over, because I mean to teach that cunt nobody messes with Curtis, man—hey!”

His monologue choked off to a shriek. He clawed at his ass and held up the throwing star I’d lobbed at him. “What the fuck?”

The second guy howled. A star protruded from his shoulder.

Curtis spun, and sprayed the woods with bullets from his Uzi. “Who the fuck are you, you fuck?” he shrieked. “I’ll waste your ass!”

So much for stealth. Curtis was wavering, toppling. The other guy went down even faster. The points of the stars were treated with a high-power, quick-acting sedative. I waited for some reaction from the barn.

Sure enough. The door opened and a man poked his head out. A man who fit the description Nancy had given of Snake Eyes. Big, burly, close-set eyes.

“What the fuck is going on?” he snarled. He saw the unconscious men collapsed on the ground, and his face twisted with disgust. “Fucking jerk-offs,” he muttered, and lifted his pistol.

He pumped a short burst of bullets into them both. The sprawled bodies jittered on the ground and lay still.

I stared through the foliage. The two men were torn apart, lying in pools of blood. Snake Eyes lifted his gun and sprayed the woods in a wide arc. Bullets sliced through grass and leaves, right above my head. Splinters of bark and earth flew, bullets thudded into the ground.

Snake Eyes laughed hysterically. “Fuck off and die, shithead!” he howled. “It’s my turn now! I got her now! You can go fuck yourself!” Another spray of bullets punched into the forest—rat-tat-tat-tat.

Snake Eyes ducked back inside. In the distance, police sirens started to wail.

I ran like a bolt from a crossbow across the carnage in the clearing and flung myself at the door. “Nell!” I bellowed.

“Duncan?” she called back, just as bullets pumped through the door.

One of them grazed my hip, like a sharp flick of flame. Another caught my pocket above my knee, ripping the fabric.

She screamed, a wrenching cry that froze my blood as I sprinted around the building.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Nell

“They’re coming,” John said to Haupt. “We have to cut loose. Curtis and Turturro are meat. Didn’t see Gerard. Probably dead, too.”

“They’re coming? Who is coming? How did they know where to come? How is it possible?” The man’s voice rose to a shrill, querulous squawk. “You stupid, incompetent?—”

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