Termination Orders(69)

He had to get out of there. He got up, slowly, but even the shifting of his weight was too much, and the whole roof deck emitted a long, low groan.

“There’s someone up there!”

It took about five seconds from when Nickerson said those words to the moment shots began flying at Morgan. With no thought of stealth, he made for the ladder. Bullets punctured the roof, which shook unsteadily underneath him. Each step telegraphed his location to the shooters, and the bullets were never very wide off their mark. He ran to the edge.

The ladder. There was no time to turn around. He bent down and, holding the top rung, swung over into empty space. But he was too heavy, the structure too old. The screws that held the ladder in place were ripped out, and Morgan, clutching the ladder tightly, fell backward into empty space.

The ladder twisted with a metallic whine, bending under his weight and hurtling him toward the ground. He braced for impact; but instead, it jerked his arm hard, holding him some three feet off the ground. It held, bent like a decrepit old man, but it held. Morgan breathed a sigh of relief and dropped to the ground.

With shots still resounding inside the warehouse, Morgan ran, taking the back route to Conley and the car. They would reconvene and find a way to get to Nickerson. They would—

A pipe swung out of nowhere in front of his eyes, and then pain, blinding pain, and he was on the ground. His addled brain tried to make sense of things. Someone hidden around the corner of the next warehouse, waiting for him. He was struggling to hold on, to stay awake, but oblivion washed over him in waves. Just before he was completely submerged, he saw the sinister, arresting beauty of T’s face looking at him and smiling, perversely, like a rogue elf at Christmas.





CHAPTER 32


Morgan and T collapsed together on the bed, side by side, taut young bodies glistening with sweat.

“That’s going to leave a mark,” Morgan said, still gasping for air.

“I think it may have left a few,” she said as she looked him over.

His own eyes followed the curves of her nakedness and how the morning light, filtering in through sheer curtains, played on her porcelain skin. Outside, birds chirped, and intermittently he heard the dull ring of cowbells, and an occasional moo—the sounds of an alpine village.

“I hope,” said T, stretching catlike on the bed, “that we have not bothered Frau Kappel. There isn’t another inn for miles and miles.”

He smiled at her and stroked her soft hair. She leaned in and gave him a lingering kiss. “I love you,” she said in a whisper.

Morgan, at a loss, didn’t respond. He knew, of course, how to lie, and had this been an assignment, he would have reciprocated convincingly. But his relationship with Natasha had long since ceased to be an assignment, and the last thing he would do would be to deceive her. The truth was, he could not honestly tell her the same. She looked down, disappointed at his hesitation.

“Checkers?” he suggested hopefully. It was clumsy, but it was an out for both of them. She nodded weakly. He arranged the pieces on the board, which was already laid out on a table from an earlier game. She looked out the window silently, then sat across from him.

They had played more than a hundred games of checkers since that first night. Every game had been riveting, a true match of wills, and all their matches, every single one of them, had ended in a stalemate. But her game that day was slow and distracted, and she made two mistakes toward the beginning that put even the stalemate into jeopardy. She seemed agitated, nervous.

“Hey, listen, T, I . . .” he began. “I’m sorry, all right?”

She scowled at him. “It’s not that, you idiot.”

“Then what is it?”

“The mission. Going back there. It frightens me.” She grimaced, scrunching her delicate face, and then with a roar of rage flung the checkerboard at a far wall. The board made a visible dent in the finish.

“You could just stay, you know,” he said softly.

“No. I can’t.”

“There’s no reason for you to go back.” he insisted. “Stay here. Let us take care of this for you. We’ll bring your brother to you.”

“No. You know that if I don’t go back, they will kill him.”

He didn’t have an answer for her. He knew it was probably true. He’d gladly trade her brother’s life for hers, any day. But her feelings for her brother, he knew, went beyond just familial piety. She loved him, loved him dearly. “He kept us alive,” she had once told him. “When my father died, and as my mother slowly killed herself with drink. He was my father and mother then. I owed him the shoes on my feet and the clothes on my back. I owed him my daily bread. I would have languished, cold and starving, without him. But he provided for me, and he taught me to live. If I had many lifetimes to give, it would still not repay—” Her voice cracked, and she turned away from him, covering her face. That was the only occasion he had ever seen her cry.