Friday, 8:00 p.m., Pasadena, California
This had not been the day to get shot.
As a female special agent, Darcy knew how to fight—that’s the only way she got where she was—and she knew how to take a hit. A gunshot to the upper left quadrant was one hell of a smackdown, but it wasn’t enough to stop her.
She just wasn’t dressed for it. Darcy would give anything for some tactical pants with a gusseted crotch and pockets for a high-beam flashlight and at least two knives.
Darcy was dressed for her undercover gig as a damn executive assistant, not a gun fight. The Betabrand yoga pants that looked like office clothes weren’t bad—thank you, Facebook ads, for that suggestion—but it had been Hawaiian shirt day at the office, and she had caved to the peer pressure. Hiding in the shadows would only do so much good. Her hot pink shirt was plastered with smiling pineapples. The dancing hula girl awarded to her for being the best-dressed employee sat on her desk next to the stapler. To top it off, the stupid shirt had been too tight to hide a gun, so Darcy had to leave Sister Mary Clarence, her P220 .45 caliber, at home. Sister Mary wasn’t government issue, but she shot true.
Darcy loved winning, but not enough to die for the honor of being best-dressed employee at eStocks Enterprises.
If she had to guess, she’d say the perp shot her with a nine mil—small caliber, traveled at over a thousand feet per second, burned like hell. If the shooter had balls, they would have used a .45. Sister Mary Clarence would have smote them and sent them straight to hell. Not only that, but whoever it was, they couldn’t aim for shit. Darcy only took headshots.
She ran down the street as fast as she could with her hands pressed to the wound to stanch the bleeding.
A construction site near the office beckoned her in, its loose Tyvek sheeting blowing in an open doorway. Tomorrow morning, a couple of guys would be shooting the shit, drinking cheap coffee, and catcalling girls right here. Someone had whistled at her yesterday. What that told her: 1) her ass looked fine in Betabrand, and 2) there was not enough cover from the street even for momentary shelter—find higher ground.
On the third floor, she threw herself against a pillar and peered across the expanse, lit only with ambient light from the neighboring businesses. She dialed her boss.
Alice Strong picked up on the first ring, “Agent?”
“I’ve been compromised.”
“By the target or his affiliates?”
“Someone else. I haven’t made an ID.”
“We have your location. Help is on the way.”
“Affirmative. I’m sending what I have now.”
“Hang in there, Agent. The team will be there in approximately four minutes.”
Darcy clicked off the phone. She’d been so careful. She’d followedprocedure. Hell, she’d worn a Hawaiian shirt just to blend in. How she’d been compromised was beyond her.
As promised, she prepared an encrypted file. When she hitSEND, she left a bloody smear on the screen. Waiting for a file to load while bleeding out could literally take a lifetime.
At seventy-eight percent uploaded, a gun sounded, and the phone blew clean out of her hand and skittered across the concrete floor.
Instinctively, Darcy squared off. Her attacker wore a mask. There was nothing to give away their identity—black clothes and a medium-sized athletic build. “I bet you were aiming for my head,” she said.
In chess and hand-to-hand combat, it’s best to make the first move, so Darcy grabbed a stray pipe and swung it with everything she had. It connected with the attacker’s knee with a dull thud, and they staggered. Before Darcy could gather her strength to swing again, the person punched right where the bullet was lodged.
Even before she recovered enough to move, she knew there was only one option left: escape. Ignoring the pain, she turned and ran as fast as possible, which wasn’t fast. Her attacker followed with disturbingly slow and deliberate footfalls.
Her heart pounding and the stain blossoming on her dumb shirt, she ran blindly until she hit the edge, literally. “Fuck!” There was nothing but air where a floor-to-ceiling window was set to be installed.
The attacker walked slowly into the office with a confidence born of having the upper hand.
“So how’d you find me?” Darcy said. If she stalled long enough, maybe backup would arrive. It’d been two minutes already.
“It wasn’t hard with that shirt.”
“But the earrings are perfect with it, right?” She’d ordered oversized pineapples in shades to go with the shirt for $5.99 on Amazon. They’d actually arrived on time. Lucky her.
Below, a black SUV squealed to a halt, and a team of agents spilled out. Darcy screamed, “Up here!”
“Nice try, Darcy.”
