Before the Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

seventh floor. A door swung open, a light in the hallway suddenly illuminating the room, and Brood members poured out into the hallway, most likely believing they were under attack.
    They weren't far wrong, considering those fires burning below; Moody's idea of a diversion seemed to Max to be just short of an all-out blitz on the Brood stronghold. Moving quickly now, unsure how long Moody's fireworks would keep the gangsters occupied, Max lowered herself onto the sill of the seventh-floor window and went to work. Using a glass cutter, she etched a circle big enough to accommodate her slender form, punched it in, and then held the edge to maintain her balance as she undid her tether.
    The lithe thief released her hold on the rope and the window, seeming to hang there for a second, then leapt headfirst through the hole and somersaulted onto the mattresses scattered across the floor, coming up in a fighting stance.
    The room was empty, unless you counted the stench left behind by a dozen unwashed souls sleeping in what had once been an office for one. Only the desk remained from the furniture that had formerly marked this room as a place of business; it sat to Max's left, one mattress on top of it and another underneath, one end stuffed under the desk so the owner's head rested where a worker's legs and feet had once been. In the Brood, this probably qualified as earthquake awareness.
    Tiptoeing to the door, Max listened for any sound that might indicate she wasn't alone on the floor. The information about the security plan had reached Moody through a Brood intermediary who apparently figured the bribe he'd solicited from the Chinese Clan was worth risking the wrath of his own gang.
    According to the sellout, Mikhail Kafelnikov—the formidable, legendarily sadistic leader of the Brood—kept the museum security layout in a safe on this floor, in his private office at the far end of the hall.
    The building, tomb-silent, appeared to have emptied as the Brood poured downstairs to check out the explosions. Moving into the hallway, Max's hypersensitive hearing sought any sound—a creak of the floor, the squeak of a sneaker, even something as inconsequential as the breathing of a guard . . . nothing.
    Nothing but the distant crackle of flames and raised voices, anyway, many floors below.
    An eyebrow lifted in a little shrug, before Max took off into a short sprint that deposited her at the threshold of Kafelnikov's office.
    She
really
wanted to make sure that sinister son of a bitch wasn't in—again, she listened intently, hearing nothing, then tried the door . . .
    . . . locked.
    Max considered picking the lock—she had the tools, and the knowledge—then decided her limited time would be better spent inside the office. Rearing back, she kicked the latch next to the knob and the door splintered with a satisfying
crunch
as it swung open.
    Time is money,
she thought, moving inside the empty room.
    Empty of people, at least. This was a combination office, apartment . . . and arsenal. To the left, running the length of the wall, a rack displayed with pride guns, rifles, machine guns, and shotguns. Shelves above the rack held boxes of grenades, flashbangs, and a wide array of pistols. She could have easily helped herself; but ever since Lydecker had shot one of her X5 sibs that night in the barracks, Max had had an innate abhorrence of firearms. She hated the foul things then, she hated them now.
    The wall opposite the guns, to Max's right, was home to a monstrous round waterbed covered with silk sheets; next to it, like a disapproving parent, stood a tall stainless-steel refrigerator. The wall itself was a huge window, moonlight flooding the room with ivory. The center of the office, in front of Max, was dominated by a massive kidney-shaped desk, behind which loomed an oversized, thronelike leather chair. A large-screen TV rose like an altar to the right of (and behind) the desk, angled toward the bed. Behind the leather throne, an