Ten... Nine... Eight... Seven... Six... Five... Four
The vehicle containing Marcus and Viktor drove away from the warehouse.
Keira drew in a breath. Held it.
Three... Two...
She ducked behind the heavy metal bin, covered her ears and closed her eyes.
Boom!
The explosion rocked the ground beneath her, but the trash bin shielded her from flying debris.
Flames rose and quickly consumed what remained of the warehouse, turning the cloud of dust into an impenetrable orange fog filling the night.
Keira rose from behind the trash bin and hurried away from the scene. Several blocks away, she emerged from the choking dust and smoke, climbed onto the motorcycle she’d stashed in an alley and drove away.
Adrenaline still racing through her system, she headed south, taking the backroads, putting as much distance between herself and the people who wanted her dead.
If not for the warning, she might not have made it out of the warehouse in time.
Who had warned her? Who knew about her safehouses? How had they found her?
This time had been close. Too close.
Would she be as lucky next time?
Anger spurred her on.
For the past ten years, she’d been groomed, trained and molded into Onyx. She’d learned to be invisible, to blend into the shadows. A ghost. A lethal weapon. It had been her identity.
Before Onyx, she’d been nothing. Homeless. Living on the streets of Dallas. Barely surviving. As part of Onyx, she’d had a purpose. Or so she’d thought. Their brainwashing and manipulation had been all too complete. Too effective. She’d been Onyx.
Now, she had to relearn who she was. Who Keira Davies was. Plus, gather enough evidence to put the people away who’d made her a weapon to be feared, before they erased her completely.
* * *
Truckstop on the outskirts of Austin, 8:30 am
Keira entered the shower stall in the truck stop, carrying the supplies she’d purchased at a drug store several blocks away. She stripped out of the hoodie she’d worn since leaving Waco and stuffed it into the trash receptacle. She stripped out of the rest of her clothes and hung them on a hook, out of the way. She pulled on the pair of latex gloves that had come with the kit and went to work.
Following the directions on the box, she applied chemicals that would bleach the color out of her naturally dark brown hair. When she’d waited the recommended time, she stood beneath the shower and rinsed the chemicals from her hair, then patted it dry with one of the towels she’d purchased. Then she applied the toner and waited twenty minutes. She rinsed the toner out of her hair, squirted conditioner into her palm, rubbed it into her hair and rinsed again. She finished her shower, washing her entire body with body wash, glad to be clean after running for over three days.
After she dried off, she bent over and brushed her hair toward the floor. Tangles removed, she grabbed the length in a loose ponytail near the crown of her head. With the scissors she’d purchased, she hacked off the ponytail four inches from her scalp.
When she straightened, her hair fell in damp layers almost to her shoulders. When it dried, curls would make it appear shorter and frame her face, helping to hide some of her features.
Keira dressed quickly, the hair color and cut having taken too long already. She’d been in the shower stall for over an hour. Truck stops had security systems. Systems accessible via the internet. If one of the cameras had caught her face beneath the hoodie, it might only be a matter of time before facial recognition software found her, and before Onyx and Kaufman Syndicate located her and sent their goons to eliminate the threat.
She’d ditched her dark jeans for the faded blue jeans she’d picked up in a thrift store. A long-sleeve chambray shirt tied at the waist and worn dingo boots would help transform her from black ops to farmhand. Believable at a truck stop in Texas. The battered straw she had pulled out of her go-bag would hide her eyes and complete her disguise, for the moment. She had a backup wig, baseball caps, different-colored shirts and lightweight jackets she could throw on at a moment’s notice. The go-bag was reversible, allowing her to change the color and carry it as a duffel bag or wear it as a backpack.
Disappearing and blending into a crowd were all part of her Onyx training. She just had to make sure she used it well enough to fool her mentors and other operatives.
Keira stepped out of the shower stall and checked her reflection in a mirror. She didn’t recognize herself from the woman who’d walked in an hour ago. But she recognized the desperate street rat from ten years earlier—the girl who had been dragged into the police station and handed over to a social worker.
“There’s this program I know of. One that can help you get off the street. Learn new skills. Give you training and purpose,” the woman had said. That woman had been Layne Jenner. How had she flown under the radar for so long, disguised as a social worker? What state official had rubber-stamped her background check?
Yeah, Keira had chosen the “program” over foster homes where the foster “parents” were in it for the money and couldn’t care less about the kids and teens for whom they were supposed to provide a loving, stable home. She and her sister, Kit, had been in a few. They’d carried their garbage bag of meager belongings that were eventually lost or replaced with worn hand-me-downs. She’d stuck it out for Kit until they’d ended up in a home where the foster parents’ oldest son raped Keira. When he went after Kit, Keira had nearly beaten the teen to death with a baseball bat. She’d taken Kit and run away, going from a bad situation to worse.
