A linen-cleaning service truck approached the loading dock and backed in, headlights shining on the trash bins.
She closed one eye to keep from losing all her night vision.
Finally, the driver turned off the truck and the lights.
With both eyes open, the one still adjusting, she thought she saw a shadow slip around the side of the loading dock and into the building. She couldn’t be certain with her eyes still correcting after being blinded by the truck’s headlights.
The driver climbed down from his truck and up onto the dock.
She made her move, floating through the night like a ghost, moving from shadow to shadow until she was a few blocks from the high-rise apartment building. Pulling her communications devices from her ears, she dropped them on the pavement and smashed them with her heel, severing contact with Viktor. With her life.
Walking away from a mission, refusing to complete a job, was a death sentence. She’d gone from being an asset to becoming a liability. A loose end.
A target.
In a matter of seconds, she’d turned her world upside down. She needed time to think about her next moves in a safe place. A place only she knew about.
Because of the work she’d done for Onyx, she’d cultivated several safehouses she could use when things got hot, and she needed a place to chill and lay low for a while.
Moving swiftly, she made her way through the city, clinging to shadows, always looking over her shoulder.
Nobody walked away from Onyx.
Anyone who dared to leave the organization was carried out, and the body was buried where no one would find it.
* * *
Another shadow slipped through the night, triggering the motion sensor of the exterior surveillance camera on the apartment building. A figure dressed in black entered the high-rise and took the service elevator up to the penthouse.
Entering the apartment was easy since the security alarm had previously been disarmed.
No one heard the intruder or the shot fired from a handgun fitted with a silencer. On the way out, a shadowy trespasser moved back through the apartment, pausing at the white quartz kitchen counter. The SD disc was swapped for a different calling card.
A stone.
Black onyx.
* * *
Seventy-two hours later...
* * *
“You are Onyx,” Viktor’s deep voice drilled into her.
“No,” she cried, unable to move or free herself from the bonds holding her. “I’m Keira.”
Keira Davies jerked awake, gasping for air and struggling to free herself of the bindings trapping her arms and legs, only to realize the ties that bound her weren’t ties at all. She kicked her way out of a sleeping bag she’d staged in yet another one of her safehouses—this one being a rarely used warehouse on the outskirts of Waco, instead of the house in the suburbs of Dallas or the cabin in the piney woods near Tyler.
Three days on the run. Three different safehouses. And she had a feeling, if not visual confirmation, that someone was getting close to catching up to her.
She stood, stretched and switched on a light in the office where she’d set up camp. Spread across a desktop lay photos taken from surveillance cameras, more photos she’d taken herself over the past months. For some time, she’d been following the Kaufman Syndicate and its leader, Marcus Kaufman. Some of the photos were of him. Others were of the people with whom he was closely connected or with whom he conducted business.
Among those photos were some of her mentor, Viktor Rousseau; Deputy Director Alan Strickland; Marcus Kaufman; his girlfriend, Layne Jenner; and Senator Richard Morales. She’d laid some out across the desk, taped some to the wall and connected the photos with strips of string between those she’d seen together. All the work she’d done gathering intel had been for the sole purpose of digging deeper into the organization that had trained her to do their bidding under the pretext of helping her country.
Keira fired up her laptop, tuning in to the latest news from Dallas.
A male anchorman, with intense dark eyes, stared into the camera. “Investigators are still searching for the person responsible for the murder of Senator Richard Morales in his penthouse apartment. Anyone with information about the shooting should notify the police.”
