‘I guess it was inevitable you would want to find out about your background.’ Serle raised a beckoning hand toward her gun. She passed it across reluctantly. ‘After all, you age differently than normal humans, don’t you, Madeleine?’
She barely noticed the surprised glances the men who had broken into Serle’s office cast her way. She stared into the scientist’s deep-set eyes and knew without a doubt that he held the answers she had long sought. Her hands fisted by her sides, nails digging so hard into her palms she drew blood.
Kevin reached for the radio clipped to his left shoulder and was about to depress a button when Serle turned and looked at him.
‘What are you doing?’ said the professor curiously.
‘Asking Hank to phone the cops. We need to call this—’
The report of the Sig made Madeleine jump. The bearded stranger grabbed her shoulder and pulled her behind him. The man who had fallen through the ceiling took a step forward, muscles jumping in his jaw.
A crimson patch bloomed on Kevin’s uniform, over the left side of his chest. He blinked, looked at the rapidly expanding circle of red, and collapsed to the floor with a puzzled expression. The other guards moved out of the way of his falling body, faces impassive and guns still trained on the two male intruders.
Madeleine’s throat and chest tightened. She realized she was holding her breath. Her eyes remained locked on Kevin’s face while a silent scream of denial echoed inside her head.
‘Make it look like she killed him,’ Serle told the three guards Madeleine didn’t recognize. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, carefully wiped the Sig, and dropped the gun by the dead man’s feet. He studied the two men who had broken into his office. ‘Now, who are you and what are you doing here?’ He aimed his Glock at the guy who had dropped in from the ceiling. ‘I would like some answers before I start shooting you in the knees.’
The stranger’s expression darkened. ‘I don’t think we’re going to get any more out of this bastard, do you?’
‘I agree,’ said his bearded companion.
Coldness flooded Madeleine. The guards with Serle looked like killers. The reality of the situation was beginning to sink in; the three of them were not going to make it out of there alive.
Despite this undeniable fact, the demeanor of the intruders remained relaxed. Her fear slowly abated. If they could face death so calmly, then so could she.
A condescending smile curved Serle’s thin lips. He cocked an eyebrow at the two men. ‘You seriously think you have the upper hand here?’
‘You’d be surprised at what we can do,’ said the guy with the steel-blue eyes.
Chapter Fourteen
Confusion danced across Serle’s face a second before he lost all color. ‘You are immor—’
It was as far as he got. The Glock in his hand, the weapons in the guards’ grips, and her Sig all crumpled into twisted, gray balls. The desk sagged as the metal legs supporting the thick sheet of glass buckled. The computer monitor and the secondary hard drive started to slide across the angled surface.
Madeleine leapt forward and stayed their fall. She noted their crushed edges almost absent-mindedly in the stunned silence that ensued.
‘Oops,’ muttered Steel Blue.
Madeleine’s pulse thrummed rapidly in her ears as she followed his contrite gaze to the distorted sword in the bearded man’s grasp.
The latter sighed. ‘Just fix it later.’
Time unfroze.
The three guards dropped their mangled guns and charged across the floor. Serle backed hastily out of the room behind them, panic etched sharply in the lines of his face. He turned and ran.
Light glinted on the edge of a wickedly-curved knife as it arced through the air toward Madeleine’s face. The fingers of her left hand closed over the flash drive at the same time that the bearded man grabbed the collar of her shirt and yanked her backward. The guard’s knife met the twisted remains of his sword with a clang. The computer and the hard drive slid off the edge of the desk and crashed to the floor.
Across the way, Steel Blue delivered a brutal hook punch to another guard’s face.
The bearded man dropped his sword, spun on his heels, and jabbed his elbow sharply toward his attacker’s throat. The guard deflected the blow with his palm at the last moment.
Madeleine saw the third guard’s knife swing up to stab her savior in the ribs. She brought her left leg up and hook-kicked the blade from his hand just as it was crushed by an invisible force into an unrecognizable lump of metal. The guard stumbled backward and gripped his wrist, his expression deadly as his gaze flicked to the man with the steel-blue eyes.
The latter was grinning.
A glimmer of understanding dawned in Madeleine’s mind. Steel Blue was the one responsible for the damaged guns, desk, and knife.
But how?
There was motion to her left. She bobbed out of the way of the guard’s uppercut, delivered a lightning-fast knee thrust to his abdomen, and brought her elbow down sharply at the base of his neck when he doubled over. The man let out a throaty gurgle and fell to the ground.
The bearded man glanced at her, his eyes flaring slightly.
Madeleine flashed a fierce grin his way. She had trained long and hard over the years for the eventuality of this mission; she knew how to defend herself.
The bearded man dropped beneath another guard’s swinging foot, punched him in the gut as he came up, grabbed the back of the guy’s head, and slammed his face onto the tilted desk. The tempered glass cracked with the force of the blow. Blood spurted from the guard’s broken nose and busted lips, his eyes fluttering closed as he lost consciousness.
‘Well, I think we’re done here, don’t you?’ Steel Blue said across the way.
He dusted his hands and nudged the still body of the guard at his feet with his boot.
‘Indeed.’
The bearded stranger picked up his sword off the floor and slid it with some difficulty into the scabbard strapped to his back.
Steel Blue studied the damaged computer and hard drive. ‘Looks like we’re not gonna get our hands on Serle’s data after all.’
His words surprised Madeleine.
These guys are also after the information on Serle’s private drives?
Sirens rose in the distance, distracting her. She moved to the window and peered through the drapes. Flashing lights appeared over a rise to the southwest.
Serle must have called the cops after all.
‘We’ve got two minutes, tops,’ she said tensely over her shoulder. ‘If it’s information you’re after, I’ve got some.’ She opened her left hand and showed them the flash drive. ‘I’ll share what I know if you help me get out of here.’
The two men assessed her for a moment before exchanging cautious glances. Steel Blue shrugged.
The bearded stranger hesitated. ‘Let’s go.’
She looked down at the hand he proffered. Her fingers rose automatically to his.
Heat flashed along her arm when their skin made contact. His hand twitched around hers. Before she could fathom the expression in his stunning eyes, he turned and dragged her toward the door.
Madeleine glanced at the twisted remains of her Sig with a sinking feeling; there was no point retrieving the weapon now. Her gaze moved to the dead guard. Remorse stabbed through her. Although she wasn’t the one who had pulled the trigger, she felt responsible for Kevin’s death.
They saw no sign of the professor when they exited the office. Steel Blue took the lead and turned left. They made their way along a brightly-lit corridor toward the back of the building and came to a junction.
‘This way!’
She indicated the passage to the left and tugged on the bearded man’s hand.
‘Where does this go?’ he said gruffly.
‘Service stairs to the basement car park!’
‘Sounds good to me,’ muttered Steel Blue.
They crossed a series of empty passages, turned a cor
ner, and spied the exit at the end of a narrow hallway. Madeleine half expected to see more guards materialize in their path when they shouldered through the fire door into a dimly-lit concrete stairwell. They raced down the staircase two steps at a time. A cavernous, dark underground space opened up before them beyond the door at the bottom.
‘Where’s your ride?’ said Madeleine.
‘Tucked down a side street five hundred feet northwest of here,’ said Steel Blue.
A visual map of the area flashed across her mind’s inner eye. She scowled. ‘Shit! That’s a lot of exposed ground to cover!’
She turned and moved rapidly toward a fire exit at the head of a flight of steps to the left. Moonlight greeted them when they emerged into the deserted, south-facing parking lot. They were a third of the way to the chain-link fence that guarded the grounds of AuGenD when a squeal of tires rose from the far right.
There was movement at the edge of her vision. Three black and white San Diego PD Ford Crown Victoria squad cars skidded into view around the corner of the building.
‘Ethan!’ barked the bearded man.
‘I’m on it!’
Steel Blue staggered to a stop and raised his left hand palm facing out toward the vehicles barreling across the asphalt.
A series of pops echoed across the parking lot. For a second, Madeleine thought the cops had opened fire.
The wheels flew off the cars. Sparks erupted as the vehicles dropped down onto their axles and skidded to a stop in an ear-splitting shriek of grinding metal.
‘Whoa!’ Steel Blue looked at his hand as if he was seeing it for the first time. ‘I could get used to this.’
‘Move, boy!’ shouted the bearded man.
His grip tightened around Madeleine’s hand as they sprinted for the fence line. She had no option but to follow, her mind reeling from what she had witnessed.
You can worry about that shit later, Black! Just focus on getting your ass out of here first!
They were at the barrier within seconds. The bearded man pushed through a cut section at the bottom and pulled her after him. Steel Blue was close behind them. Warning shouts sounded in the night. Footsteps pounded the asphalt as the cops gave chase.
They came to a steep incline and scrambled down the dirt slope to the road at the bottom. They headed left and took a sharp right some eighty feet later. A single gunshot shattered the air above their heads as they charged along a tree-lined street. A black Jeep was parked in the shadow of a warehouse halfway down the right-hand curb.
‘Give me the keys!’ shouted Madeleine as they approached the vehicle at a dead run.
‘Why?’ said Steel Blue.
‘Unless you know this place like the back of your hand, I suggest you let me drive!’
Metal glimmered on her left. Madeleine caught the Jeep keys mid-flight and depressed the button on the fob. The Jeep’s lights flashed as the locks disengaged.
Bullets zinged off the asphalt inches from their heels. The bearded man let go of her hand. Madeleine dashed around to the driver’s side, yanked the door open, and leapt inside. She started the engine while the two men were still getting in, switched into reverse, and stepped on the gas before the doors slammed shut. The Jeep shot backward along the road.
Up ahead, five San Diego PD officers stumbled to a halt, widened their stance, and raised their guns in double-handed grips. The muzzles of their weapons flashed. The sound of gunfire reached Madeleine above the screaming engine and the rush of blood in her ears.
A couple of bullets glanced off the Jeep’s right bumper.
Steel Blue grunted in the rear seat. The policemen dropped their guns as if they’d been stung and took several hasty steps back. Although she couldn’t see well enough from the distance, Madeleine guessed the weapons were now useless, distorted lumps of metal.
‘That’s a neat trick,’ she said grimly. ‘You’re gonna have to teach me that one day.’
‘I’m afraid it comes with the blood,’ Steel Blue mumbled.
She glanced in the passenger-side mirror, saw what she was looking for, took her foot off the gas, and twisted the steering wheel sharply to the right.
The Jeep lurched around with a sickening screech of burning rubber. The bearded man slammed into the window. There was a thud and a curse from the back seat as Steel Blue was flung against the door.
Madeleine waited until the vehicle almost stopped spinning, changed gears, and floored the accelerator. The Jeep lurched forward. She took a sharp left into the narrow back alley at the end of the street. Moonlight illuminated the deserted landscape populated by chaparral and scattered groves beyond the chain-link fence to their right.
She was formulating an escape route out of the valley when the shrill sound of sirens came from the left. Madeleine glanced between the buildings they were passing and spied a pair of patrol cars racing parallel to them along the main road. One of them veered into a side street and charged toward the Jeep.
A fence appeared at the end of the alley up ahead.
There was motion in the rearview mirror. The patrol car swung in behind the Jeep.
Madeleine stepped on the gas and gripped the steering wheel tightly. ‘Hang on!’
The bearded man braced himself against the dashboard and the roof a second before they crashed through the barrier. The fence peeled away from its supporting columns. The Jeep lifted briefly off the ground before juddering back down with a jolt. She navigated around a copse of trees, barreled through some bushes, and burst out onto a patch of open ground.
‘You guys better put those seat belts on,’ she warned.
‘Why?’ came the suspicious query from the backseat.
The bearded man had seen what was coming. He glanced at her with an expression that Madeleine chose to interpret as admiration.
‘Just do as she says,’ he told Steel Blue.
She clipped her own belt across her body, braked gently, dropped gear, and aimed the nose of the Jeep at the edge of the cliff one hundred feet ahead. The second patrol car had joined the first one chasing them. The gap between pursued and pursuers narrowed.
Madeleine’s stomach lurched when the ground disappeared beneath the Jeep’s wheels. The four-by-four sailed through the air before bouncing onto the angled wall of a concrete culvert. She felt the vehicle start to slide, corrected the angle of the spinning axles with a flick of her wrist, and let out the breath she had been holding when they bumped onto the base of the tunnel. She veered west and accelerated.
‘Where’d you learn to drive like that, Mata Hari?’ said Steel Blue.
Before she could phrase a reply, a loud crash sounded behind them. The first patrol car had taken the drop too fast and landed smack down on its front bumper. The vehicle rocked for a moment before tilting over and falling onto its roof.
The driver of the second patrol car proved to be the smarter man. He negotiated the edge of the cliff as carefully as Madeleine had and was soon giving chase once more. She scowled and concentrated on the lay of the land coming up.
The culvert ended some two miles away, on the side of one of the canyons that flanked the hilly valley where AuGenD was situated. At the bottom lay a stream that joined up with the San Diego River and a field of deadly rocks. One hundred feet before the fatal drop, the north side of the tunnel sloped gently back up to the floor of the basin.
Madeleine knew she would have one shot to get it right. She put as much distance between the Jeep and the pursuing patrol car as she could, leaned over the steering wheel, and peered into the gloom.
The finish line appeared all too soon, an insubstantial lightening of the darkness ahead where moonlight shone across the opposite side of the gorge.
She dropped into third and turned the Jeep toward the north wall. The tires gripped the angled concrete smoothly. The engine screamed under the hood as the vehicle ascended the side of the culvert.
She was starting to think they were going to make it when the front right tire canted and lifted off the grou
nd. The Jeep started to tilt and slide. The man beside her leaned across and steadied the steering wheel slipping through her grip.
‘Floor it!’ he barked.
Madeleine complied with the command gladly.
They were over the lip of the tunnel a heartbeat later and bounded sharply onto the ground parallel to the culvert.
Brakes squealed at the bottom of the channel to their left. The patrol car had gone into a wild skid and was headed inexorably toward the gully.
She brought the Jeep to a halt in a cloud of dirt. ‘Shit.’
Steel Blue moved in the corner of her vision. He pressed his hands against the window and stared at the spinning vehicle below. Lines furrowed his brow.
The patrol car slowed, tires leaving layers of rubber on the concrete.
Madeleine gasped. She glanced at Steel Blue.
How the hell is he doing that?
The vehicle looked like it might stop before it reached the cliff edge. Madeleine started to breathe a sigh of relief. It froze in her throat when the back end of the car slipped over the abyss. It started to tilt inexorably.
Just as it was about to drop into the gorge, the front end of the vehicle slammed down onto the concrete, pushed by an invisible force. Sparks flew underneath the carriage as it was dragged forcibly forward.
A grunt escaped Steel Blue’s lips. Muscles corded in his neck.
The rear tires of the car rolled up onto solid ground a heartbeat later. It rocked to a stop some five feet from the canyon. The two officers in the front seats sat frozen, eyes wide in ashen faces as they braced themselves against the dashboard.
Steel Blue released a shaky breath and leaned his forehead against the window. His breaths fogged up the glass.
‘Let’s go, Tarzan,’ he murmured.
The bearded man watched his companion silently, his expression enigmatic.
Madeleine swallowed and drove off into the night. It wasn’t until the sound of sirens had disappeared behind them and they’d cleared the boundaries of the city that she pulled over in a deserted lay-by off a narrow, backcountry road.
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