A tear ran down Claire’s cheek.
I was about to say something when I spotted someone else.
There was one person who hadn’t been skinned. He was at the entrance to a little boutique sitting up by the lamp post.
Vlad.Our scientist.
That was him. I was sure of it.
I moved to him. It was a foolish move because I didn’t check out the place first, for traps or anything. I took on my usual daredevil persona and moved.
The bullet that whizzed past my ear just missed me.
It made me snap into action though and reach for my gun, aiming it directly in the direction the bullet had come from.
That’s when I saw him. On the roof, not ten feet away from me was Balthazar Kane.
Balthazar with a shotgun in his hand, a bright smile on his face, and his long black hair billowing out in the wind like a cape.
“Wonderful to see you Xander Cage.” His voice was heavy with his southern accent. “You guys shouldn’t bother. You won’t stop me.”
He pulled a file from the bag he’d been carrying. I already knew what it was.
The fucking research.
He had it, he actually had it in his hands. All that work to protect Vlad, and shit, this was what happened. Vlad had a hole in his head and the enemy had the research.
The thing was Balthazar only made his presence known for some sort of reason.
What was it?
I glanced out the corner of my eye to check that Claire was safe and thanked fuck she hadn’t taken on that ballsy attitude of hers by following me. She and the other guys had taken cover.
“Why are we seeing you!” I roared. I wasn’t in the mood for his shit this time.
I’d seen this man a total of five times. Every time was a sort of heads up to something disastrous about to happen.
He laughed. “On the news tonight, we’ll hear how Vlad Hanflick, our clever scientist, was killed in an attack and how the entire village got blown to smithereens. Ten bombs going off everywhere. The question is can you get out in time or will you save the children in the orphanage? You only have three and a half minutes Xander Cage, tick-tock.”
I didn’t wait for him to finish. The motherfucker was a nasty piece of work. He’d put a bomb in the orphanage!
In my head I conjured up the map we’d seen of the area. The orphanage was near the lake house. There was a playground nearby.
In blind panic I moved swift like the wind. It reminded me of that first time I ran for my life.
I was sixteen and got involved with the worst crowd. Mobsters. They wanted me to pick something up. Drugs. It was a bag of drugs. The whole thing went wrong and they nearly killed me, nearly beat the life out of me.
I’d managed to escape. That was when Jack and Claire found me. I’d hid in their garage.
The fear from that time fueled my moves now because that was the first time I’d ever felt true fear. Fear that I would die. That I wouldn’t make it. It came to me now because it was that thing again, fear I wouldn’t make it.
All around me the bombs started going off. One, then another. It shook the ground making me stumble. I leapt over a bench and raced to the orphanage.
It was just ahead.
Just ahead.
I was almost there, my goal to get anybody inside out.
