Dark Angel: Skin Game Read Online Free PDF

and easy."
    The van moved through the crowd to screams of "Monsters!" and "Kill 'em now!"
    Looking out the back window, Max watched Clemente melt into the crowd, then the crowd melt into the night, as

    the two vehicles rolled off into the darkness. Tension seemed to palpably dissipate—
    the crisis was over.
    Finally, when Max saw no one following them except the ambulance with the others, she let out a long sigh of relief. "We're clear."
    The van filled with whoops and cheers as Joshua and Mole knocked fists.
    "Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Mole yelled.
    "It's all good," said Alec, a wide smile breaking his normally laid-back demeanor.
    Grinning into the rearview mirror, Logan said, "Just for the record, that girl was kickin'
    your ass."
    Logan was referring to a particularly bulked-up female fighter on Ames White's hit squad, back at Jam Pony.
    Alec's smile tightened a fraction. "I had her. I was just set-tin' her up."
    Everyone laughed.
    Keeping her voice low and even, knowing they weren't really in the clear yet, Max said, "All right, head for Terminal City."
    Something nagged at Clemente—this just didn't feel right—and when he entered Jam Pony it was with gun drawn and both arms extended, his flashlight in his left hand, his pistol in his right.
    Behind him, four members of the SWAT team—the PD's men, not White's—fell into a loose line and then spread out once they were inside the door. The power was still out and the place was bathed in eerie shadows, strangely quiet after the tension of the day.
    It was almost as if the building needed a rest too....
    Coming around a corner, Clemente saw three people sitting on a bench, apparently just waiting for the police to enter. Nearest him sat a young woman of perhaps twenty, her short brown hair tied into two tiny pigtails. She wore a tan hooded pullover and khakis.
    Next to her sat a taller, muscular, nerdy guy with black-rimmed glasses, a blond flattop, wearing a blue pullover short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Beyond him, a tiny bald guy, also in his early twenties, wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. They all seemed calm.
    Very damn calm, for just-released hostages.
    "Anyone hurt?" Clemente asked, shining his flashlight toward them, but not into their eyes.
    "No," the young woman said. "We're okay ... but you better go look upstairs."
    Was there something ... mocking in her voice?
    Slowly, all his attention focused on the doorway ahead, Clemente led the way up the stairs. On the landing, he hesitated for only a second before swinging through the door with his pistol outstretched. Behind him, the SWAT team fanned out into the room.
    It was immediately obvious that a ferocious battle had taken place up here. Nearly every pane of glass in the windows and in the top half of the wall that separated the warehouse space from the office space lay in shards on the dusty floor. Shelves had been tipped over, furniture broken—the place was a shambles.
    Playing his light around the room, Clemente settled his beam first on a muscular redheaded woman lashed to a cement support. She had been gagged and taped to the pillar with packaging tape, as if waiting delivery, perhaps by one of the bike messengers.
    Swinging farther around, Clemente's light fell on a trio in their underwear—they'd been stripped of their uniforms and lashed to another pillar. They too had been trussed up and gagged with packing tape.
    Clemente realized at once that this meant the SWAT team members who'd seemingly hauled off 452 and the rest were

    impostors, wearing the uniforms of the SWAT team they'd defeated. And he knew he should spring into action, but...
    He couldn't keep a wide smile from spreading across his face.
    "Special Agent in Charge White," Clemente said, in mock good humor.
    The normally smug and very trussed-up government man, Ames White, growled something that came out garbled because of the packing-tape gag. He had not been stripped of his clothes—-just his dignity.
    "What was