Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Well, then he might die because that wound he’d taken seemed to have opened up. He’d thought it was a glancing blow, but he was weakening now.
“According to the map, I’m almost to 124.” He hoped. The roads were winding, and he wasn’t exactly in a proper car for this kind of driving. It was supposed to be early spring, but this freak blizzard had popped up and he could drive right off the edge of a mountain. “I have the intel. I will download asap.”
“I’ll alert our agent in the embassy. But you…not…she’s…”
Static broke up the call. He made another turn and noticed that it wasn’t so dark now. The pitch black of night was giving way to a deep, velvety blue. Almost sunrise. “Say again.”
Up ahead he could see the start of warm lights glowing in the distance. The cabin. The porch light was on. So close.
“124…careful…”
He was losing the signal, and the wound in his side was aching again.
“Important asset…”
“What about the asset?” Drake looked down to see where the phone had gone.
That was the moment the road seemed to slide out from under him and he spun, the world tilting, and he heard someone scream.
Then the world seemed white and so cold. So fucking cold.
His gut churned and there was a pain that seemed to take over his entire body.
Was this death? It felt empty because there wasn’t some wonderful flash of his life, not even a bunch of regrets of the roads he hadn’t taken. There was only failure because he wouldn’t complete his mission.
Shouldn’t there have been something more?
The light faded and questions no longer mattered as the cold took him under.
* * * *
Taylor Cline woke to the sound of a crash. It hadn’t been loud, but it was so quiet on the mountain that sometimes she could hear the crunch of animals walking in the snow at night. She sat straight up in bed, reaching for her Glock with the ease of long practice. She’d been sleeping with a gun close since she was seven when her father had decided to come back into her life and the world had changed. She’d missed her mom—missed her so deeply in those first days, but her big bear of a father had stormed in and made sure she wasn’t alone.
Unfortunately, he’d brought all of his problems with him. Hence the gun.
She took a deep breath and assessed the situation.
The green light on the wall told her the cabin hadn’t been breached. The security system was functioning.
Everything was quiet again but something was wrong. She could feel it deep down. That sound hadn’t been a bear or deer. And it had stopped.
Was her father back? Had he been followed? Was he outside?
She slipped into a pair of sweatpants and tugged on a sweater before moving through the cabin to the small room that held all the tech, including the monitor for the twenty security cameras placed around the property and the paths that led here.
When the CIA built a safe house, they kept tabs on the sucker.
She began with the cameras that were closest to the cabin and worked her way out. Dawn was beginning to break, and there was a small rat-like creature on the front porch. Likely trying to hide from the feral cat who hung around because she kept feeding the sad-looking thing.
It was almost sunrise, that weird time between utter darkness and the sky becoming a flaming variety of sherbet colors. Dawn here reminded her of the ice creams her dad used to buy her. No matter where they went her dad would find someplace that served lime and strawberry and pineapple frozen treats. Ice cream. Gelato. Frozen ice. She liked it all, and those colors reminded her of her dad.
Who wasn’t on the monitors. She touched the keyboard to move to the perimeter cameras. Every now and then she would catch sight of a brown bear or one of the lynxes that prowled across these mountains, and she would stop and stare because they were so rare now. But today there was nothing.
The phone rang. Not her cell. That didn’t work so high up on the mountain. She had to go down at least a hundred and fifty meters to get a signal. The phone that rang was an old-school rotary from at least 1955.
Sometimes the best security was low tech. She picked up the earpiece. “This is Delta.”
It was her designation with the Agency. Her father was known as Alpha. They’d tried to stick her with Beta, but she’d refused.
“Delta, we have a situation that might need taking care of,” the deep voice on the other end of the line said.
“I’m standing by.” It looked like this cushy assignment was about to turn interesting.
“We’re not sure what happened but one of our higher-level agents was supposed to pick up valuable intel from an asset last night in Kraków. Something went wrong and he’s coming to 124,” the agent explained. “I was talking to him a few moments ago when the call dropped. Has he shown up?”