“These pricks probably killed them,” said one of the other agents. Krieg.
“Maybe they should have come after me with a warrant,” I said, and for a moment I actually enjoyed the fear that flashed in their eyes. Then a second later I felt like a jackass and a bully. I caught Top looking at me, one eyebrow slightly raised in mild reproof. But he had a trace of a smile, too. Top is always the grown-up in the room. I seldom aspire to that role.
“We don’t need a warrant,” said Krieg.
“If you’re going to try and play the ‘national security’ card, son,” said Top, “maybe you’d better go reread the rules. We are national security. More than you know. More than you’ll ever be. So, don’t embarrass yourself here. Be a man, Agent Krieg.”
I had to fight to keep the wince off my face. Krieg didn’t. Ghost made that snarky sound again.
“Okay,” I said, squatting down in front of Harrald, “let’s cut right to it. Why were you following me? What were your orders? Who cut them?”
She tried to burn holes through me with her eyes.
“I didn’t kill the first three agents,” I said, “but they’re having a bad day. You’re having a bad day, too.”
“What are you going to do?” she said. “Shoot us?”
“No, dumbass. I’m hoping to reason with you. One federal employee to another.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“That would be sexual harassment, and besides… ewww. No.”
Harrald turned a very nice shade of tomato red.
“What I want here is for you to act like a professional. If you have a legal reason to attempt an arrest, then you need to tell me. And I don’t want to hear ‘Patriot Act,’ because that is what I use to wipe my dog’s ass. We both know that I’m with the Department of Military Sciences, which means I’m operating according to a precisely worded executive order. It is an irrevocable order, too. If you haven’t read it, then maybe you should. Oh, that’s right, it’s about a zillion steps above your pay grade. Ask your boss’s boss’s boss to read it. We don’t get arrested by the benchwarmers. If we somehow step on our own dicks, there are proper channels to address it and we would get spanked pretty damn hard. So, whatever you’re doing is, literally, illegal. I can arrest all of you. I would, in fact, have been within my legal right to shoot the shit out of you when you came after me with guns drawn. Be real happy I didn’t toss a fragmentation grenade in your face. I have some with me.”
Her ferocity was showing cracks at the edges, and I knew that she knew I was telling the truth. Maybe if we were alone she might have opened up, but her crew was with her. From what I know about the current state of the Secret Service, there was a lot of backstabbing and cliquishness polluting an organization that used to be known for its deep integrity. That made me sad and, let’s face it, a bit cranky.
But Harrald didn’t say anything else. None of them did. They bit down on their humiliation, fear, and anger and sat like defeated lumps.
There was a huge temptation bubbling in my chest to threaten them with what I could do to their lives with MindReader. It would have felt good for about three seconds. It might even have crowbarred one of them open… but it would have been small. And I knew Top would disapprove. Adult in the room, blah blah blah. Moral decency can occasionally be a pain in the ass.
So instead, I straightened and said, “When you get back to the office, tell your boss to pass a message up the line. You’ve come at me twice today, and both times you fucked up. Both times you also got lucky. If I was some kind of bad guy, as you cats seem to think, then I’d put bullets in your heads and burn this building down on top of you. However, I think you’re a bunch of misinformed idiots and not actual villains. Stay on that side of the line. Don’t come after me again. Make sure no one else comes after me. I just used up the very last of my give-a-fuck. Got no fucks left to give.”
“Hooah,” breathed Top.
We turned to go. Ghost shot me a seriously, no biting? look, then snuffed and followed us up the stairs. Top paused at the top step and yelled over his shoulder.
“Sit tight,” he said. “We’ll call someone.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Eventually,” he amended.
We left.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The men had no idea they were in danger.
They had no idea that death was falling toward them. They stood with their eyes fixed on the green glow that swirled up from below the castle floor. They stood transfixed. All of them.
And then Violin was among them.
The first hint any of them had of her presence was when one of the biggest men seemed to collapse beneath the improbable weight of shadow. Out of the corners of their eyes they saw a cloud of darkness strike him on the shoulders with such force that it bent him backward, broke him, crushed him down to the unforgiving stone. The scientists screamed in shock and sudden terror. The soldiers whirled, cursing, torn from one impossible thing to another.
And then the shadow rose from the twisted, dying man and coalesced into something else. Tall, slim, sheathed in black, with matched kukri knives in her gloved fists. Silver flashed and then the air was filled with rubies.
The closest man reeled backward, clutching at his throat, unable to process why it felt so hot and so wrong. Another soldier swung his Kalashnikov around with the speed of years of combat, but then it tilted and fell, held only by one hand. The other, still clutching the wooden handguard, no longer belonged to him. He gaped at it for a moment and then saw a line of silver moving toward him too fast for him to evade. He did not even have time to cry out.
Far above, Harry Bolt watched the carnage as he fought the release control on the silver wire that suspended him from the ceiling. It was supposed to operate with a gentle pressure of his thumb, but the goddamn thing would not move. He cursed and squeezed it with all his strength, hissing as his struggles made the harness cut even harder into his tortured scrotum.
“Come on, you goddamn cock-sucking son of a bitch,” he snarled as he shook the stubborn release. “Come on… please!”
Below, Violin was in the center of a storm of violence. Guns fired but she was never there. Men lunged at her and grabbed nothing. But there were so many of them and she was alone. Harry had a sidearm, but he did not trust his accuracy enough to risk a shot. Even though he’d become more skilled under her tutelage, he seldom scored more than one shot in ten in the kill zone. Violin seemed to be everywhere, dancing like she did, performing a ballet of slaughter. He was absolutely certain that if he tried to shoot from up there he’d probably kill her.
So, in desperation, he held the release in one hand and punched it with the other.
It did, in fact, release.
But his blow bent the speed-belaying device out of alignment.
He did not descend.
He plummeted.
Violin heard the caterwauling wail as Harry Bolt dropped like a rock from the ceiling, but she could not do anything about it. Ghul and two of his men were chopping at her with knives and trying to bring pistols to bear, and she was forced to take the fight to ultraclose range, using speed and her natural athleticism to evade and engage at the same time.
Behind her there was a heavy, ugly whump as Harry crashed down, and an accompanying double scream of pain; proof that he’d landed on one of the invaders instead of the unyielding ground. Violin could not spare the time to look, because everything around her was blood and fury, rage and death.