Adriana shoved her hands in her jacket pockets to make sure she still appeared to be nothing more than a casual shopper as she made her way over to the next escalator.
One of Youssef’s guards turned his head in her direction. She averted her gaze, twisting her head to look in the jewelry shop to her right. She took a few lazy steps toward the boutique before drifting back the other way toward the escalator. She kept her head forward, but stole a short look up out of the corner of her eye. Youssef and his guards were getting off on the third floor, apparently paying no attention to her.
She sped up again and climbed aboard the escalator, this time taking faster steps toward the top.
Adrenaline coursed through her. There was only one more escalator to go. Were they going to the roof? She wondered why the men hadn’t taken one of the elevators if that was the case.
Once more, she watched as they boarded the last escalator and slowly ascended to the top floor. This time, instead of following right behind them, Adriana walked over to a women’s clothing store and stepped inside. She wasn’t stupid. In her experience, guards like the one with Youssef would have their heads on a swivel. If they noticed the same woman one floor down more than once, they’d be startled like frightened woodland creatures.
She found a spot behind a mannequin wearing a long green dress and peeked out from behind it. Both guards were looking around, making sure nothing suspicious was going on. She’d been correct to find a hiding spot. The problem now was that she was losing ground.
That didn’t matter much. The men didn’t have anywhere else to go except the stores on the fourth floor, or perhaps the rooftop bar.
She didn’t know why, but Adriana had a strange feeling it was the latter.
This time, the men veered to their right and wandered toward the end of the mall and a gray metal door. They were heading for the stairs.
Adriana frowned. The elevator surely would have been quicker. What were they playing at?
“May I help you?” a woman asked in a polite tone.
The question momentarily startled Adriana. She spun around and realized it was just the store’s salesperson.
“I really love this color, but I’m going to have to come back later.”
She rushed out of the shop and out onto the main walkway. The men disappeared through the door and into the stairwell. Adriana kicked it into high gear, nearly speed walking over to the escalator. She climbed it rapidly, taking the steps two at a time until she reached the top.
When she arrived at the stairwell door, she paused and pressed her fingers to her jacket. She felt the weapon through the fabric. Satisfied it was still in place, she pressed down on the handle’s button and eased the door open.
Thankfully, it didn’t squeak, which was what she’d feared would happen. She slipped through the opening and looked around inside to make sure the men weren’t close.
She heard a door slam shut from the top of the stairs. That was all the confirmation Adriana needed.
She crept upward, making sure her shoes made no sound as she climbed. After rounding the first corner, she checked above, sweeping the area with the pistol in case one of the guards had lingered behind.
As she climbed the remainder of the steps, another thought occurred to her: What if this is some kind of trap?
Surely they hadn’t seen her. Then again, if Adriana believed someone was following her, she would have taken similar action: skip the elevator, go up a sequence of escalators, then go up the stairs to…she saw the sign next to the door. It read Roof Access, Authorized Personnel Only.
Something wasn’t right.
Adriana was already reaching for the door handle when she changed her mind.
She pulled back to the corner of the platform and waited with pistol in hand. If it was a trap, walking through the door would be a fatal mistake. These guys weren’t the type to let someone go unless it was over a high ledge.
So, she stayed put and waited.
Five minutes went by, and still nothing happened.
She was about to give in and push through the door when she heard a man’s deep voice on the other side.
“Must have been a false alarm, sir.”
One of the other men, she assumed Youssef, chastised the one who spoke first. She couldn’t clearly hear what he was saying, but it didn’t sound good.
“I thought she was following us, sir. I apologize.”
“Can’t believe you wasted my time like this,” Youssef said. His voice was much closer than before. He was coming toward the door.
Adriana pressed her back against the wall next to the door’s hinges and waited with her weapon held in her right hand close to her cheek.
The door handle jiggled. The sound echoed down through the stairwell. Then it turned, and the door swung open.
“I’m a busy man,” Youssef was saying. “I don’t have time to run from shadows.”
Like a flash of lightning, Adriana’s left hand shot out and grabbed Youssef by the shirt. The man was probably an inch or two under six feet and nearly two hundred pounds. By no means was he little, but he wasn’t exactly a gym rat, either.
She yanked him to the side and kicked the door closed on the two guards. It was a temporary stop, but it was all she needed to buy enough time to secure her hostage.
When the guards burst through the door, they found their boss with an arm around his throat and a pistol to his head.
They aimed their weapons at her, but she gave almost no target. One wrong twitch and their employer’s head would be the one splattered on the wall.
“Let him go,” one said.
She recognized it as the apologetic voice from the conversation a minute before.
“I’m going to say no to that,” Adriana said. “Put your weapons down, or I kill him right now.”
The guards narrowed their eyes, probably wondering what they should do.
“Do what she said, you idiots,” Youssef wheezed. He was desperately trying to get enough air into his lungs.
She squeezed tighter, and he clawed at her forearms, struggling to free himself.
The men hesitated. Adriana pressed the muzzle harder against Youssef’s temple.
“Do it,” she said.
The guard on the left moved first, gradually lowering his weapon toward the floor. The one on the right didn’t react as quickly.
“I will kill him and then you,” she warned.
“You idiot,” Youssef spat through clenched teeth. “Do it or I’ll kill you myself.”
The man blinked rapidly and then obeyed. He bent down at the waist and put the gun on the floor next to the other.
“That’s better,” Adriana said. “Now, be good boys, and kick them over here for me.”
Again, they hesitated but did as instructed without needing to be told twice this time. The weapons slid on the smooth concrete and stopped at her feet.
“One last request, gentlemen. Get down on your knees for me.”
After they’d done as told, she eased her grip on Youssef’s throat. He gasped for air the second he felt her forearm loosen.
“Very good. Glad to see you can learn. Now, Youssef, you and I are going to have a little talk.”
He snickered. “Talk? About what? How I’m going to have your head for this? Perhaps along with some other parts?”
His English was perfect. His accent was definitely foreign. Which Middle Eastern country, she wasn’t sure.
She squeezed his neck tight again. “That isn’t very nice. You shouldn’t piss off a woman who’s holding a gun to your head. Now, tell me about the Red Ring. We know you’re planning something big. I want to know what it is.”
He let out a laugh, though it was hard to with her arm around his throat. He started to say something, but she squeezed harder.
“Before you say something stupid,” she cut him off, “you should know that I have very little patience for cliché answers like you’re probably going to give me. You know, the typical ‘I’m
not saying anything’ or ‘the Red Ring is more powerful than you’ll ever know,’ so I recommend just telling me the plan before I make this really painful for you.”
He started to snicker.
“See?” she said. “You’re laughing. Which means you either don’t think I can hurt you, or you’re going to give me one of those tired speeches we talked about a second ago.”
Youssef tried to swallow, a tough task with Adriana’s arm strangling him.
He said something in Arabic to the two guards.
They nodded at the same time.
“Really?” Adriana asked. A thick tone of cynicism carried in her voice. “You just told them to kill me the second I let go? What makes you think I’m going to let go? Oh, and I speak Arabic. Did you honestly think someone in my position wouldn’t?”
He did his best to shake his head. “You don’t understand. It’s already in play. There is nothing you can do to stop it, no matter what I tell you.”
“Let’s go ahead and try that anyway.”
“No. I think instead you’re going to die.”
Adriana frowned. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just the man’s brazen lack of fear. She sensed someone else in the stairwell. Suddenly, Adriana spun around and stepped to the side, releasing her hostage as she moved. Gunfire came from the next level down in a split second, tempered by suppressors on the men’s weapons.
Bullets tore through Youssef’s body, splattering crimson all over the floor and his two guards.
He shook and gyrated as the rounds riddled his body. The shooting stopped and he wavered for a second. Then he fell forward toward the railing and toppled over. His body tumbled between the stairs. His head hit a railing two floors down and caused the body to spin wildly out of control until it hit the bottom.
The two guards rushed toward their weapons, desperate to take out Adriana. She spun and unleashed a shot into the closest one’s head, dropping him instantly. The second she shot in the neck and back.
She spun around and looked down the stairwell at the other two gunmen.
They were gone.
7
London
Adriana ran down the stairs, skipping two or three at a time. She could hear the gunmen hurrying down but only saw a hand now and then as they gripped the railing to brace their descent.
She stopped on the third floor and aimed her weapon down the shaft until she caught a glimpse of an arm. She fired three times, but the rounds ricocheted off the railing and concrete walls.
She cursed herself for missing and started running again.
By the time Adriana reached the second floor, she heard a door slam shut down below. The men had gone outside—or at least that’s what they wanted her to think.
She slowed her pace and crept around the corner of the last landing before the main floor. She swept her weapon around the confined space to make sure it was clear. Even then, she stopped and waited in case one of the gunmen was lying in wait to pop open the door and shoot her at point-blank range.
After a few seconds, she rushed to the door and swung it open, poking the gun’s barrel through the crack.
Nothing but panicked shoppers filled the mezzanine as they ran for the exits. The shootout in the stairwell must have sent them into hysteria. Adriana saw no sign of the shooters. She closed the door again and sighed. If people were panicking, she’d have to get out of there before the cops arrived.
She sighed in frustration and turned her attention to Youssef’s corpse lying a few feet away in a pool of thick red liquid.
She grimaced at the sight of the twisted limbs, at the unbelievable amount of blood.
Adriana had seen her share of dead bodies, some of which she’d put in that permanent state of rest. This one, however, was a little bloodier than usual. Youssef’s skull was crushed in on the side. His torso, shoulders, arms, and a few places on his thighs, had been shredded by the mystery shooters’ bullets.
Too bad that Youssef couldn’t reveal any secrets now.
She checked her magazine, quickly counting how many rounds she had left before sliding it back into place.
A bitter, acrid smell filled the room. Adriana knew the scent: gun smoke and blood.
She stuffed the gun back in its holster in the folds of her jacket and was about to walk out the door when she heard a low but distinct noise—like a hum or a rattle—coming from Youssef’s body.
Her head snapped around, and she stared down at the dead man. The sound kept coming. She bent down on one knee. Doing her best to keep out of the blood pooling on the floor, she sifted carefully through the man’s clothes until she found the source of the noise.
She pulled his phone out of a pocket and looked at the number on the screen. No way she was going to answer it, no matter how tempting it was.
The call ended and the phone went silent.
Adriana stuffed the device into her left pocket and started for the door. A second after she pushed it open, she saw the swarm of cops charging her way.
She stepped back and let the door close. It was beyond time to leave.
She turned and bounded up the stairs, flung open the second-level door, and rushed through.
Her feet skidded to a stop. Hundreds of panicked shoppers rushed to the escalators, pushing and shoving their way toward the exits.
The phone vibrated again a single time. She knew that meant whoever called probably left a voicemail.
Adriana hurried to remove the phone from her pocket. She was about to hit the listen button when the phone suddenly went dark. She frowned and hit the home button. It brought up a screen saver of the late Youssef surrounded by exotic cars.
The phone was locked, and there wasn’t enough time to try to crack the password. Adriana was lucky the device hadn’t been damaged in the gunfire or the fall to the floor. With Youssef dead, her only possible link to the Red Ring was that phone. She wondered who had called and left a message.
The device abruptly vibrated again, and the lock screen simply showed the words text message on the screen.
Again, she didn’t have a way to investigate without the passcode. Hacking electronic devices wasn’t her thing. Ancient languages, foreign languages, art history, investigative skills, and general butt-kicking were all part of her repertoire. The digital stuff, however, was not.
Fortunately, another one of Adriana’s skills was her ability to network with all sorts of people, including some with less than legitimate backgrounds. One name immediately came to mind.
The guy’s real name was Raymond, but everyone in the hacker community knew him as A-Tak. Adriana had given him grief about the nickname, insisting on calling him Ray to the point where she thought he might cry. Apparently, he didn’t like his real name—any version of it.
Ray was able to hack pretty much any electronic device. Didn’t matter what brand or operating system, he knew how to work it. Phones were a little different, but she didn’t have a choice. Ray was her only chance at finding Camir Asad.
Pocketing the device again, Adriana stepped out onto the second floor and stuffed her hands in her pockets to look as casual as possible. She strode toward the escalator amid people running and screaming. A man bumped into her as he recklessly sprinted for the escalator. The bump sent a dull pain through Adriana’s shoulder and briefly knocked her off balance. She kept moving toward the escalator, hoping no one would notice her, when a man’s voice from behind froze her stiff.
“Miss?” the guy said in a sharp accent. “Hold it right there.”
Her eyes blinked rapidly. She didn’t know what to expect. Was it a cop? Mall security? She slowly twisted around and realized it was the former.
A man in full uniform was approaching her with what she perceived to be the utmost caution.
“Is there a problem, Officer?” she said. It was a line she’d picked up in the States, although she figured it probably got used internationally.
“That depends,” he said as he took another wary step toward her.
>
She could feel the weapon in her jacket pressing against her side. No way she was going to use it. He was one of the good guys, like her—unless he’d been bought. She shook off the notion.
“Depends?”
He held up a phone in his right hand. “On how much you need this. I saw you drop it when that guy bumped into you a moment ago. Hope it isn’t damaged.”
He examined it closely, twisting it around in his fingers.
Adriana caught her breath. She hoped there wasn’t any blood on it. She’d never really checked for that, although if there had been it might have rubbed off in her jacket. Either way, if he saw anything suspicious, getting out of the mall would be a much trickier proposal.
“Looks like it’s all right. Might want to hold on to it, though. Doesn’t seem very secure in your pocket.”
She stepped toward him and put on the best appreciative smile she could muster. “Thank you so much, Officer. I appreciate it.” She took the device and had a quick look to make sure it wasn’t cracked. The cop didn’t need to know that all she cared about was what information the phone contained. At this point, it was all about appearing to be nothing more than a confused shopper.
“I heard someone say there were gunshots,” Adriana said. She put on her victim face.
“We’re not sure what it was, Miss. We just know we’re trying to get people out of here as fast as we can to make sure everyone is safe.”
His canned response was standard operating procedure. The authorities wouldn’t give away details because of the panic it could incite. From the looks of things, it wasn’t working. People were freaking out.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Best be going. Careful getting out.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man turned and strode away, waving other shoppers toward the exits.
Adriana didn’t push her luck. She trotted over to the escalator and after waiting a moment stepped on and didn’t look back.
At the bottom, dozens more officers were ushering people out the doors. They were doing their best to maintain some kind of order, but the entire scene was chaotic.
When Shadows Call Page 5