The shooter pivoted toward the other guard. His face white with shock, he was reaching for the holstered weapon under his jacket. The shooter pushed the button and fired his second shot, striking the guard in the center of his face. And then the face was gone. The body sprawled backward, blood, bone fragments, and tissue spraying the screens and walls behind him.
The shooter looked at his partner, gesturing toward the dead men.
"Close," he said. "I only expected there to be one of them."
The man near the door nodded.
"Let's take their guns and get on with it," the shooter said.
When she heard the phone ring at nine-thirty, she wondered if perhaps Anna had forgotten something in her rush to leave the house. The kids had acted up and been late getting ready for school, and Anna, who dropped them off every morning on her way to work, had made her exit amid quite a hustle and bustle.
"Hello?" she said, picking up.
A strange male voice. "Kirsten Chu, please."
She hesitated, her heart suddenly banging in her chest. She'd been expecting a call from the police, which was the reason she hadn't volunteered to help out her sister and deliver Miri and Brian to their classrooms herself. The police, this had to be the police. Anna and Lin… and Max, of course.. were the only other people who'd know to find her here. And the person at the other end wasn't any of the latter.
"Who's calling?" she asked in a cautious tone. Purposely offering no acknowledgment of her identity.
"My name is Pete Nimec, and I'm—"
She didn't even hear him finish the sentence, so completely overwhelming was the recognition that swept over her. Her heart beat harder, faster. She inhaled, feeling as if the breath had been knocked out of her.
"Dear God, that's the name," she said, the words springing from her mouth on their own. "You're Max's friend, aren't you? The one he wanted me to call?"
A beat of silence. "Yes, I am. I—"
"How is he?" she interrupted. Worry had swept chillingly through Kirsten's initial excitement. If Max were all right, why wouldn't he be calling?
"Kirsten, we need to meet. I have to speak with you in person, find out what's happened to him. To both of you."
"You mean you don't know…."
"No, Kirsten. I don't. No one's heard from him."
She clutched the phone, her hand shaking around it. Her entire arm shaking.
"Then how.. how did you get this number?"
"I'll explain all that later. I promise. Right now it's just urgent that we get together. I'll come to you there. It's probably best if you stay put."
Kirsten breathed.
What reason was there to trust this man? This name Max had mentioned once in a moment of urgency? This voice? The truth was that she hardly even knew whether Max was the person he'd seemed to be…
Except that wasn't true. She did know. Maybe not everything about him. Maybe not as much as she should have known. But as she'd told Anna just days ago, she loved him….
Had loved him long before he'd put his own life at risk to save her…
And what was love, always, always, but a leap of faith?
"All right," she said. "I'll be waiting."
The supervisor at the encryption facility — the name plaque on his office door read Charles Turner — was shaking his head as he pored over the court papers he'd been issued.
"I must tell you, this is rather atypical," he said, glancing up at the two detectives standing before his desk.
"How so, sir? I checked the subpoenas myself to make sure they crossed all the t's."
"No, please, don't misunderstand me," Turner said. "The papers are fine. But normally I get advance notification from the officers coming for the codes. They're stored on compact disc in our vaults, you understand, and there's a rather stringent checkout process. Going through it at the last minute, well, I'll have to drop everything, Detective Lombardi…"
"We're really sorry for the inconvenience," the man standing in front of him said. "But this is our first time dealing with a matter of this type as officers."
Turner sighed and rose from his desk, looking annoyed and somewhat flustered.
"You may accompany me to the data-storage wing, though only authorized personnel are allowed in the vaults. You'll have to stay out in one of the waiting areas while I track the disk you want."
"Will it take very long?"
"It shouldn't," Turner said. "The corporation whose key-codes are being requested isn't one I recognize offhand, but the disks are catalogued on our electronic database. I can rush everything through in half an hour, maybe a little faster."
"That'd be fine with us."
Turner harrumphed, and came around the desk toward the door.
"Lead the way, sir," the detective said, falling in behind him.
The men had left Penang State, southeast of the Malaysia-Thailand border, shortly after they'd received the call from Luan. That had been some hours ago, at dawn, and they'd been driving their van down the main coastal highways to Selangor ever since. The trip would have been lengthy under the best of traffic conditions, but there were herds of beachgoing tourists jamming the roads near the bridge and ferry terminals to Georgetown, and the delays had stretched miserably in the hot, beating sun. The men in the van had, furthermore, wanted to keep a moderate speed so as not to risk being pulled over by police. The kris tattoos on their hands would bring about an instant search, and once that happened their problems only would be starting. If the police found their weapons, they could look forward to many hours of painful interrogation, followed by many years of being locked away in prison holes. And that would be a far cry from the reward they were expecting for the successful completion of their task.
The Thai had promised them a fortune.
A fortune in greenbacks for capturing a woman and delivering her to him in Kalimantan.
They had joked crudely about her physical attributes when they received the call. And in spite of their grindingly slow progress, it would not be long before they saw the object of Luan's desire for themselves. They were already better than halfway down through Perak, and would be crossing into Selangor within a couple of hours.
With luck, Kirsten Chu would be at the address they had been given. And if not, they would gladly wait there for her to arrive.
She was, after all, one woman who was very much worth it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Is there some kind of problem, Mr. Turner?" the man calling himself Lombardi asked from where he sat in the waiting area.
Holding the court papers, a puzzled expression on his face, Turner glanced at him as he returned through a doorway he'd entered just moments ago.
"The name of the corporation simply doesn't show on our database," he said, approaching his chair. "I don't know what to make of it."
Lombardi rose and sidled up to him, studying the papers over his shoulder.
"I'm no expert at this high-tech stuff, but could be it's just misspelled," he said.
Turner shook his head. ' The computers will essentially correct for that sort of error by searching for approximate matches. In this case, nothing came up."
Lombardi grinned.
"Then I guess those papers are fake and the company doesn't exist," he said.
Turner looked at him. "I don't understand…"
Lombardi reached under his jacket and drew the Beretta he'd taken from one of the murdered security guards.
"Oh, I think you do," he said, and rammed the handle of the weapon upward into Turner's nose, shattering his septum and sending tiny slivers of bone into his brain. Turner dropped instantly to the floor, his eyes rolling up in their sockets, dark blood spouting from his nostrils. He spasmed twice, emitted a labored gurgling sound, and died.