Before the Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page B

got there, and . . . they did.
    Only now she found herself face-to-face with Mikhail Kafelnikov and half a dozen members of his Brood. They all looked as pissed as those dogs, Kafelnikov especially.
    Wait till he sees his portrait,
she thought.
    Tall and thin, the Russian immigrant was nonetheless well muscled, with close-cropped blond hair, penetrating blue eyes, and rather sensuous pink full lips. He wore a brown leather coat, knee-length, an open-throated orange silk shirt with gold chains, black leather pants, and black snakeskin boots.
    Moody had said it best: Kafelnikov cultivated both the look and the lifestyle of a pre-Pulse rock star, which his late father had been, or at least so it was said. The son supposedly had musical talent, too, but just figured crime paid better than music, particularly in a time when the entertainment industry had gone to crap.
    The Russian might well have struck Max as handsome if not for the expression of rage screwing up his features; handsome, that is, for a homicidal maniac.
    “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, momentarily frozen in the elevator. Studying the small form in the watchcap, the Russian said, “It's a girl . . . just a girl. . . .” His boys surged out with him, even as he bellowed at them, “Who
is
this little bitch?”
    Before she could respond in any manner (and words would not have been her first choice), she and the Russian and his men turned their collective head toward a crunching sound down the
hall . . .
    . . . and the pack of dogs burst through the already ruptured office door, and galloped down the hall toward them, fangs flashing, tongues lolling, saliva flying.
    Turning back to Kafelnikov, Max said, “I'm the dog walker you called for—remember?”
    And he winced in confusion for half a second, before Max delivered a side kick to the Russian's chest that knocked the wind out of him with a
whoosh
and sent him reeling back into the elevator, taking his underlings like bowling pins with him.
    Not sticking around to admire her handiwork, Max took off down the hall, the dogs dogging her heels. When she all but threw herself into the room she had originally entered, the lead dog was less than two feet behind her. Diving forward, arms extended in front of her, as if the waiting night were a lake she was plunging into, Max sailed through the round hole in the window, wishing she'd cut it a tad larger, the snarling dog right behind her.
    She caught the waiting rope and swung in a wide arc away from the building. The dog, misjudging the hole slightly, slammed into the window pane, yiped, and reared back into the office, dropping out of sight. The other dogs, evidently having learned from their leader's misfortune, stopped short of the window, their heads bobbing up in view as they barked and yapped at Max, dangling just out of the range of their jaws. One even edged its head out and took swipes at her, biting air.
    But by this time Max was shimmying up the rope, and their snarls turned to growls as they watched in impotent rage as she disappeared toward the roof.
    Below her, she heard voices. Still shimmying up, she looked down, and saw Kafelnikov's pale enraged face, head sticking out of the hole in the window like a frustrated victim with his neck stuck into a guillotine.
    “I'm going to
kill
you, you bitch!” he yelled.
    “I don't think so!” she called down, smug, calm.
    His response was nonverbal, and he hit himself in the head, possibly cutting himself on the glass.
    Laughing softly to herself, she continued to climb, knowing the Russian's men were already on their way to the roof to intercept her. Looking down again, she saw Kafelnikov's face had been replaced at the window by one of the Brood members from the elevator. A skinny guy with long dark hair reached tentatively for the rope and, just as he touched it, Max nimbly kicked off the side of the building, jerking the strand away from the guy's grasp. He nearly tumbled out.
    “You
bitch!
” he