Sunfail Read Online Free PDF Page A

pumping furiously, straight for the metro. She ran ten miles a day, every day. Pounding the pavement helped her stay clear, helped her focus. Not that it would help if the watcher was going to take her down. She gritted her teeth expecting to feel the bite of the bullet.
    Or maybe she wouldn’t feel it if he was a good enough shot? Maybe her head would just explode and she’d cease to be between steps?
    She didn’t slow down.
    Breathing hard, she raced down the steps two and three at a time, and hurdled the turnstile. She couldn’t relax. Not yet. Evasive maneuvers. She needed to get on the next available train, double back, switch lines. She looked up at the security cameras as she rushed down the escalator to the platform just as a train rumbled out of the tunnel mouth ahead of her.
    The doors hissed as they opened.
    There were people all around her.
    She took a seat in the corner, back to the metal wall, giving her a full view of the train car and making it impossible for anyone to sneak up on her. Never leave your back exposed.
    She was safe, even if that safety was temporary.
    The doors slammed after some unintelligible mumble from the public address system.
    As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t disappear.
    Not yet. She needed to get to Jake.
    And that meant stepping out of the shadows and into the light, both physically and metaphorically.

CHAPTER THREE
    “FINN! WAIT UP!”
    Finlay Walsh sighed. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with Tom. The guy was a creep. All hands and roving eyes, reveling in his thinly veiled misogynism, ludicrously attempting to hit on her with shitty one-liners. The last one had been the worst. He’d been drinking at the time. She could smell the whiskey sour on his breath, but even so that was no excuse: The only reason I’d kick you out of bed would be to fuck you on the floor. Classy. Yeah, the guy was a shoe-in for Boss of the Year with a mouth like that; in fact he was her boss, and that meant she couldn’t ignore him as much as she’d like to, even if he was about to come out with another peach like, Nice shoes, wanna fuck?
    She turned and waited for him to catch up to her.
    Tom Campbell had been a good-looking guy, once upon a time. He hadn’t aged with that George Clooney kind of salt-and-pepper grace, though, so the last of his youthful beauty lay in his blue-gray eyes. The years had turned the rest of him soft and rounded and left him with a dark Dracula peak of thinning hair, slicked back with gel to complete his seedy charm. His eyes were buried in a morass of wrinkles, bags, and extra flesh, which dimmed them. It was his father’s face struggling to come out from behind his own, Finn thought. She’d met Thomas Sr. a few times, and the irascible old man was proof that the genetic apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Maybe it was just a case of people becoming their jobs, because with his usual jeans, button-down shirt, and blazer, he looked every inch the department chair.
    Scratch that, she thought as he approached, he looked every inch the alcoholic, sexist department chair. She didn’t let any of this show in her face or her voice.
    “What’s up, Tom?” Polite. Friendly but in no way too friendly. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of being shouted down as a cock tease the next time he was loaded.
    “I just got off the phone with someone down in Cuba,” he answered, and Finn’s first thought was, How does this get turned around into another attempt to sleep with me? “A marine biologist. He’s sitting on something pretty interesting, I think.”
    “On a scale of one to ten, just how interesting? I mean, we’re not exactly the go-to team for marine biologists.”
    He considered this for a second. “I’d say this one goes all the way up to eleven.”
    She inclined her head doubtfully.
    “We’re not talking a new species of fish,” he added.
    “Don’t make me drag it out of you.”
    “His team have found a city. Well, the ruins of