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he reached out for Stevens’s big shoulder and, as the knife tip slid out again, Zero slingshot himself around the large man’s body. Two shots rang out behind him—thwip-thwip from the suppressed pistol—and struck Stevens in the chest as Zero landed behind him. Sharp, astounding pain burned in his injured hand, but the adrenaline was there now, coursing through him as he dropped the knife and reached around for Stevens’s pistol before the big man could fall. He snapped it out of the beefy fist and, safe behind his broad human shield, fired two shots at Baker.
He was a good shot with his left hand, though not quite as good as his right. One of the shots missed. Glass shattered somewhere beyond the alley. The second thunderclap of a shot—Stevens’s Beretta wasn’t outfitted with a suppressor—struck Baker in the forehead.
The mercenary’s head snapped back. His body followed.
Zero didn’t wait around or stop to catch his breath. He sprinted ahead again, grabbed up the USB stick that was still lying on the cement, and then ran the opposite way down the alley. He stuffed it in his pocket, along with the bloodied knife, and then took Stevens’s Beretta with him. It had his fingerprints on it.
Somewhere a car alarm whooped loudly. The shattered glass he’d heard must have been a car window. He hoped no one had been hit.
The large man’s chest heaved up and down. He was still alive. But Zero didn’t have the luxury of finishing him off or waiting around; besides, with the knife wound to the throat and two shots to the chest, he’d be dead in seconds.
People shouted in alarm from somewhere nearby as Zero sprinted to the end of the alley, stuffing the gun in the back of his pants as he did. He turned the corner and looked all around in bewilderment, hoping that he looked as much the shocked passerby as anyone else.
As he hurried to the end of the block, he heard the shriek of a woman—no doubt discovering the two bodies in the narrow alley—and then a male shout, “Someone call nine-one-one!”
They had to die. There was no way around it. He had known it as soon as he had accidentally tipped his hand and said Baker’s name. He knew it when he showed them the USB drive he had retrieved from the bank.
Oddly, there was no remorse. There was no “what if?” of whether or not he could have talked them out of trying to take the drive or seeing them from his perspective. It was a situation of him or them, and he decided it wasn’t going to be him. They made their choice, and they chose wrong.
The entire ordeal, from tossing the USB stick to fleeing from the alley, had unfolded in a matter of seconds. But he could see every moment clearly like a slow-motion instant replay in his head. The strange thing was that when Baker had fired the gun mere feet from his head, hitting the brick wall, Zero’s thoughts were not of how close the bullet had come, or that Baker could have easily killed him if he wanted to. It wasn’t of the girls. Instead he was keenly aware of the dichotomous nature of his scholarly mind against his rediscovered memories. Zero was cool, calm, and believed, perhaps due to some hubris or experience or a combination thereof, that he was still in control of this situation.
It was a bizarre sensation. Worse still was how much it frightened and thrilled him at the same time. Is this who I am? Was Reid Lawson a lie? Or have I been living my life for two years with only the weakest parts of my psyche?
Zero strode to the end of the block, looped back around toward the flower shop, and went straight to his car. He could see that a sizable crowd of onlookers was gathering around the corner, many in shock or even crying at the sight of two dead bodies.
No one was paying any attention to him.
He drove casually, maintaining the speed limit and careful not to blow any stop signs or lights. There was no doubt that police were en route, and the CIA would know in moments that shots had been fired and two men had been killed a mere three blocks from the bank that the Division had reported Zero to have been at.
The question was what they would do about it. There was nothing at the scene that could definitively link him to it, and whoever sent the Division mercs after him—Riker, he presumed—wouldn’t be able to admit it openly. Still, he needed help, and more than he could ask of his fellow agents. They would be watched as well. If this was the type of open season it was going to be on Agent Zero, then he needed allies. Powerful ones.
But first, he needed to get his girls to safety.
As soon as he felt he’d made a safe distance from the grisly scene in the alley, he pulled into a gas station and around to the back. He buried the gun, the knife, and the safe deposit key in the dumpster under offensively awful-smelling trash. Then he got back into the car and made the call. It rang only twice before Mitch answered with a grunt.
“Need extraction right away, Mitch. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“Meadow Field,” the mechanic said immediately. “You know it?”
“I do.” Meadow Field was an abandoned airstrip about twenty miles south. “I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER SIX
Maya parted the blinds of the window near the front door for what must have been the twentieth time since their father had left. The street outside was clear. An occasional car drove by, but they didn’t slow or stop.
It scared the hell out of her to think what her dad might be caught in the middle of this time.
Just for good measure, she crossed the foyer to the kitchen and checked her dad’s phone again. He had left his personal cell behind, on silent, but his screen showed that he had missed three calls since Maya had last talked to him.
Maria apparently was desperate to get in touch with him. Maya wanted to call her, to tell her that something was going on, but she refrained. If her dad wanted Maria to know, he would contact her directly.
She found Sara in the same position she had been in for the last half hour, seated on the sofa in the living room with her legs drawn up beneath her. There was a sitcom on TV, but the volume was so low she could barely hear it, and she wasn’t looking directly at it anyway.
Maya could tell that her sister had been suffering in silence ever since they had been taken by Rais and the Slavic traffickers. But Sara wouldn’t open up, wouldn’t talk about it.
“Hey, Squeak, how about something to eat?” Maya prodded. “I could make grilled cheese? With tomato. And bacon…” She smacked her lips, hoping to amuse her little sister.
But Sara merely shook her head. “Not hungry.”
“Okay. Do you want to talk about anything?”
“No.”
A wave of frustration rolled over her, but Maya swallowed it. She had to be patient. She too was affected by the events they had experienced, but her reaction had been anger and a desire for retribution. She had told her dad that her plan was to become a CIA agent herself, and it wasn’t simply teenage angst talking. She was very serious about it.
“I’m here,” she told her sister. “If you ever feel like talking. You know that, right?”
Sara glanced over at her. A smile very nearly passed her lips—but then her eyes widened and she sat up suddenly. “Do you hear that?”
Maya listened intently. She did hear it; the sound of a powerful engine rumbling nearby. Then it stopped abruptly.
“Stay here.” She hurried back to the foyer and once again parted the blinds. A silver SUV had pulled into their driveway. Her pulse quickened as four men got out. Two of them wore suits; the other two wore all black, with tactical vests and combat boots.
Even from this distance Maya could see the insignia emblazoned on their sleeves. The two black-clad men were from the same organization that had attempted to kidnap them in Switzerland. Watson had called them the Division.
Maya rushed to the kitchen, sliding in her socks, and pulled a steak knife from the bamboo block on the counter. Sara had risen from the couch and hurried to join her.
“Go downstairs.” Maya held the knife out, handle first, to her sister. “Get