Night Shadow (2 page)

her, hel .
Kil
her.

No CGI generated bad guys. No drill. This was as real as it got.

Reaching into her tac belt, she grabbed a new magazine and wiped the

sweat out of her left eye onto the shoulder of her jacket.
Let the training

take over.
Deep breath in. Rapid reload. Pop the empty clip, slam in a new

one. Thumb the slide-stop so the slide jacks forward and fire again. And

again. Chest high, level and steady. Wrist firm, firing hand pressed

securely against her opposing palm. Double-tapping in control ed bursts,

tiny lateral movements to avoid creating gaps in the kil -zone.

Visualize the target; see the slap of the bul et.

She squeezed the trigger. A scream indicated she’d managed to hit one,

even in the dark.

She heard the thud of his body with grim satisfaction. That one wasn’t a

wizard. Or if he was, he was a dead wizard.

Her weapons instructor would be proud.

Two down. Four to go. And six more buildings to navigate before reaching

the safe house.

She couldn’t lead these yahoos there. Four more kil s, or a wild goose

chase across the rooftops of Moscow. In the dark. God, what a choice.

Lexi tried to come up with a plan. Heart manic, sweat stinging her eyes,

she leaned against the cement wall.

Think.

Easier said than done when an anvil pounded behind her eyeballs and

every instinct told her to run like hel . Odds were she’d be shot within the

next few minutes.

Take a deep breath. Center yourself. Think.

Somehow she had to circle around behind them.

Somehow.

Couldn’t see them, but Lexi heard their voices. Whispered Russian, carried

away on the light breeze, impossible to hear wel enough to interpret. She

prayed they’d conclude she’d managed to evade them.

For a moment a stray bit of light reflected off the snowy ground and she

saw them. They’d gathered in a tight little group at the edge of the roof, a

knot of dense darkness barely visible against the even bigger blackness of

the night. Big mistake, boys.

Four shots. Rapid. No hesitation.

6

Night Shadow

They wouldn’t expect her to return the way she’d come—straight at them.

Pul ing the extra fabric of her turtleneck over her mouth and nose, Lexi

welcomed the few seconds of warmth. Good time for a tac-reload. Quietly,

she slid the clip out of the mag wel and replaced it with a fresh one,

stowed the partly spent one in her belt. Then, blocking out the cold, she

dropped to the ground. A shallow, twelve-inch-high wall ran around the

perimeter of the flat roof. On her bel y, using her feet and elbows to move

her forward, she crawled up against the wall, the ful y loaded Glock in her

right hand.

One chance to do this.

One.

She could hear them more clearly the closer she got. Confused.

Undirected. They weren’t sure what to do next.
Good.

Sucking in a breath, she squeezed off a shot. Another, and another. Three

down. One to go.

The remaining guy fired back, yelling in Russian as he tried to pinpoint her

location from her muzzle flashes. But she’d already moved. She was

practical y under his feet as he fired blindly into the darkness.

Rol ing to her back, Lexi aimed for the underside of his chin. She let out

half a breath. The big oaf looked down just as she squeezed the trigger.

In that instant, some of those training details that seemed so hard to

memorize came back effortlessly. Nine-mil imeter, 124-grain, plus-P

rounds. For a Glock 19, that translated into a muzzle velocity in excess of

thirteen hundred feet per second—

Her bul et punched into his gaping mouth and blew the back of his head

off. His body instantly turned to a fine black powder.

Shuddering, she didn’t pause to congratulate herself on her marksmanship

or her mastery of weapon specs. There wasn’t time. Al the gunplay and

shouting would draw the curious, or stupid, sooner or later. Lexi hauled

ass and ran as if the hounds of hell were on her heels.

Stretched out on the narrow sway-backed bed, hands stacked beneath his

head, Alexander Stone dozed lightly. Since the room was on the top floor,

he opened one eye when he heard pounding footsteps on the rooftop just

above the window.

Interesting.

Curling his fingers around the butt of the Sig Sauer lying on the mattress

beside his hip, he lay stil , just another shadow in the room. Seconds

later, the window slammed back against the wall. A slight figure, dressed

from head to toe in black, catapulted feet first through the opening as if

jet propel ed.

He could barely make out her slender form in the darkness. Hands on her

knees, head down, Lexi struggled to catch a wheezing breath. “Shit. Shit.

Shit.”

Alex sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. “How was the play, Mrs.

Lincoln?”

7

Night Shadow

At the sound of his voice, coming as it did out of the darkness, she let out

a startled yelp as she straightened. But damn if she didn’t come up

weapon raised.

“Turn on the light.” Stil out of breath, but her voice was strong.

“Hel , Lexi. I could’ve shot you ten times by now. Shoot first, ask

questions later.” Alex leaned over and switched on the light beside the

bed. He immediately noticed the dark red wetness on her right shoulder.

“But it looks like someone already beat me to it.” Jesus. What the hel was

Lexi Stone doing in Moscow? Bleeding? When the innkeeper had assured

him his room was ready, Alex had had a moment of confusion.
He
hadn’t

already checked in . . . Alex Stone.
Alexis
Stone. No relation. Not even

third cousins five times removed— he’d checked.

Might be confusing for the accounting department, but he’d never

expected to see her anywhere but HQ in Montana. Didn’t make a damn bit

of sense seeing her here.

She belonged at her desk in the research department. She was completely

out of context in a shit-hole of a safe house in Russia.

Dove-soft gray eyes blinked at him, her expression a mixture of confusion

and irritation. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Here in Moscow or here in our room?” He’d forgotten how tall she was.

He was used to seeing her hunched over her computer at her desk at HQ.

“It isn’t
our
room. It’s
my
room. My op.”

Her . . .
op
? “Do you own Moscow as wel , or is that up for grabs?”

Annoyed, she pulled a black knit cap off her head and stuffed it into the

pocket of her coat. Wel , hel . Her hair used to be a very pretty, glossy

light brown. And long. She used to wear it in some sleek, complicated

braid thing on the back of her head. She’d cut about a mile and a half off.

Now it was chin length, fashionably choppy, and a sunny blond. “Cut your

hair yourself ?”

She raised a hand to her chin-length bob and didn’t bother answering the

obvious.“You’re supposed to be in Paris.” She touched the bridge of her

nose.

Damn it to hell. She used to wear
glasses
as wel .

“True.” He pushed back on the edge of the bed to lean against the wall,

dangling his hand off his bent knee. “You wearing LockOut under that

jacket?” Hip-length black Thinsulate coat, black jeans, soaked to the hem

of the coat, and the smallest damned combat boots he’d ever seen,

carrying a Glock, and packing an attitude a mile wide.

With a fucking bullet crease in her shoulder.

Color crept into her already chil -bright cheeks. “I just went to—”

“Get shot?” he said dryly. “We’d better take care of that.” He shoved

himself off the bed in one lithe move, tucking his Sig in the waistband at

the back of his pants. She backed up. “Did you manage to hit anyone?”

Yeah. She was tal er than he remembered. Her sunny hair would brush his

lips if he were to hold her. Which of course he had no intention of doing.

His gaze dropped to her lips. Mistake. She had the kind of soft mouth that

would distract most men.

Didn’t distract him. Alex concentrated on eye contact.

8

Night Shadow

Up went the chin. “I was trained by Darius, what do you think?”

The best of the best. No need to ask further. “Were you fol owed?”

She shot a nervous glance over her shoulder at the open window and the

night sky beyond. “I don’t believe so.”

Shit. Damn. And fucking hel . “You’d better be sure.”

“I—” She wanted to tel him to go to hel , Alex could see it in the mutinous

line of her lips. “I’m not sure,” she admitted somewhat belligerently. Lexi.

Honest to a fault.

He gave a lugubrious sigh and slid the Sig out of his waistband, not sure

who else was coming through that window. “Get that coat off and go into

the bathroom. Take a shower. I’l be right back.”

“I’l go with you.”

If he was any judge of women, and he was, the lady was about to puke or

pass out. Possibly both. “How will I explain your bloodless body to your

supervisor in the—What department is it again? Accounting?” She was the

girl with the glasses and great legs in the research department.

A cool look from hot gray eyes. “I’m an operative now.”

Alex cocked a brow. Recruitment had to be at an al -time low if they’d

made her an operative. “Strip and get in the shower. Let’s see what

garbage you’ve left for me to clean up.”

“I killed five men tonight.” She sounded half proud, half repulsed.

Yeah. She was an operative all right. Not.

“Did you, now? And how many were on your ass?” He shrugged on his

coat, pul ing the collar around his throat. The windchil inside the damned

room was below freezing.

“Six.”

“You don’t sound too sure.”

“Six.”

Reaching into a pocket Alex pulled out a cap made from LockOut, put it on

and pul ed the stretchy black fabric al the way down to his eyebrows. It

would keep the cold out—and everything else.

“You don’t believe me?”

Fuck. Now she was getting pissy about it. Of course with a first kill that

was expected. The shock had to wear off, and then you either crashed or

pushed through it and became a real operative. “Every word. I guess you

could stand right there waiting for me to get back,” he prodded when she

didn’t move. “But Muravyou is going to be pissed about all that blood

dripped on his fancy carpet.”

Rurik Muravyou was the corpulent, tobacco-chewing manager of the T-

FLAC safe house in Moscow. He would no sooner trust the creaky elevator

up to the twelfth floor, to see a
carpet,
than he’d ever be fit enough to be

an operative again. He was eighty pounds, fifteen years, and apathetical y

past it.

“Thank you for pointing out that I’m bleeding. Don’t you have someone to

shoot?”

“Yeah, good thinking.” He motioned for her to raise her arm, which would

slow the flow of blood, then swung himself up onto the shoulder-high

windowsill feet first. “Direction?”

9

Night Shadow

“Northwest.”

“Lock the window, close the drapes. Clean up. I’l be back to tuck you in

and tell you a bedtime story.”

Her lips tightened. “I can hardly wait.”

Alex’s lips twitched and he gripped the Sig tighter to focus his thoughts

away from her soft, sassy mouth. “I promise, it’l be worth waiting for.”

Two

A hot shower was going to make the bleeding on her throbbing shoulder

start again, but Lexi was too cold to care. First things first, however.

She locked the window, yanked the drapes closed, and raced into the

minuscule bathroom. Stil wearing her coat, she slammed the door shut

and sank down on the edge of the rusted tub, burying her face in her

shaking hands. If Alex hadn’t been lying in wait for her, she was pretty

darn sure she’d be throwing up right now.

Scratch that. She was absolutely certain she’d be puking. But it wasn’t the

chase
that had shaken her to the core. That had been exactly what she’d

imagined being on an op was all about. She’d been scared, but pumped by

the danger and the huge surge of adrenaline that had kept her focused

and on target.

No, the chase had been cool. Except for the getting shot part. What

freaked her out and made her sick to her stomach was knowing how close

she’d come to ending it all. The overwhelming suicidal thoughts—God, the

feelings had come over her so quickly she didn’t have time to examine

why she had them or where they’d come from.

She rubbed the dul ache between her eyes. Out on that rooftop she’d felt

like failure, a rookie about to lead the tangos behind her straight to the

safe house and ruin T-FLAC operations in Russia. Why had she ever

aspired to being one of the big dogs dressed in black? She’d failed before