Night Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

her
    characteristic stil ness that he stared. “But not unheard of,” he pointed
    out. “How do you know how old they were? Their faces were covered.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “And you know that how? Were you there?”
    “Of course. Do you think I’m here because I particularly enjoy Moscow in
    February?” His laugh was genuinely amused.
    She stiffened even more. “For all I know, you have a lovely Russian
    girlfriend.”
    “Several, but I came for the hostages. How do you know how old they
    were?”
    She shrugged, clearly forgetting the furrow on her shoulder. “I just do. It
    was their . . . lack of symmetry, I guess. Like they hadn’t grown into their
    parts. Feet, Adam’s apple, hands.” She rose. “They gave us six hours to
    get them the money and a plane to wherever. But they—” She scrubbed
    her fingers through her hair, making it stand on end. She looked damned
    cute for an operative. “I don’t get it, Alex,” she said earnestly, pulling a
    black sweater out of her bag. She yanked the standard issue garment
    over her head and tugged it down over her hips. Fit her a hell of a lot
    better than his fit him.
    “Why blow everything to hell five hours early ?”
    “Not unheard of. These guys don’t play by the rules.”
    16
    Night Shadow
    “So you saw what happened.”
    No. He hadn’t seen anything but the last fifteen people he’d managed to
    successfully teleport. His powers, lately on the blink, had malfunctioned,
    and he’d found himself back at the safe house, unable to teleport. He’d
    “sent” his bag there on his way to the op, but arrived himself only minutes
    before Lexi’s dramatic entrance. “What happened?”
    “I saw six guys go out a side door, and fol owed, but seconds before I left,
    the tangos all disappeared.”
    “Wizards, or Halfs.” Except that if they’d been either, he and the team
    would have picked up on their Trace. There had been no indication that
    the tangos were wizards at all.
    She shook her head. “I’ll show you the last few minutes of the disk. You
    tel me.” She leaned over and rummaged through her duffel, emerging
    with a small handheld device. “The disk’s in my coat pocket.” Retrieving it,
    she brought both items with her and sat on the bed beside him.
    The bed dipped, making their shoulders touch. “Do you want to see all of
    this?” she asked as the image of the inside of the station came on the
    small screen. The scene was, of course, familiar. The black-clothed tangos
    were on one side of the station, their hostages on the other. Small
    pockets of hostages disappeared from the middle of the crowd as Alex and
    his team skil fully cul ed them from the group without calling attention to
    themselves, then shimmered them outside to safety.
    “Skip ahead.”
    Lexi thumbed fast-forward.
    “Stop.” Alex took the viewer out of her hand to get a closer look. “What
    the hel . . .” He rewound, and looked again, enlarging the image two
    hundred percent as he zeroed in on two tangos standing side by side.
    Dark-haired, faces covered. Yeah. Young. He got that from their posture.
    One adjusted the blowback-operated MAC-10 submachine gun in his left
    hand. The long sleeve of his shirt rode up a bit. Running up the inside of
    his wrist was a tattoo of some sort. The image wasn’t clear enough to
    identify it, but Alex would send it in for analysis.
    But that wasn’t what caught his attention. The two kids disappeared, all
    right. But they didn’t teleport. What the . . . “They disintegrated. ”
    “I told you that. So did the guys on the roof. It was as though they turned
    to dust and then blew away on the wind. Is that what happens when you
    wizard guys die? You turn to dust?”
    “No.” His sat phone buzzed. “Stone.” He listened for a few moments while
    studying the images again on the tiny screen. “On our way.”
    Three
    Taipei
    City
    Republic
    of

China
    25 01 00 121 27 00 02 11 08
    She was going to throw up. No question about