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of the Taj
Mahal. This kind of beauty could take him by surprise even with gunmen on their
tail. Stone arches soared overhead, supporting the huge dome above them. Even
the floor was inlaid in a geometric pattern. And the details? The flowers? The
Arabic script?
    However, the single most important object was the stone
bench for visitors. He heaved it over in front of the door. It wouldn’t hold
off the gunmen long, but every second they could get deeper into the structure
without getting fired upon, the better.
    “This way,” Brandt pointed for Rebecca to take the first
hallway. The closer they were to the RPG minaret the better. If the guy was
going to fire, he was going to have to risk his own—
    Gunfire rang out from in front of them. Brandt’s body spun
to the right as a shot hit him in the gut. He compensated to the left and fired
off a series of shots. A scream abruptly stopped the return fire.
    “You’re hit,” Rebecca cried, tears streaming down her face.
    He was, in fact, hit. His knees felt like Jell-O, and his
vision constricted down to a pinpoint in front of him.
    Come on , he chided himself. It’s just a through and
through.
    “I’m fine,” he gritted out. “We’ve got to make sure he is
down for good.”
    Gripping his side, the opposite side that took a bullet in
Rome, which now made a matching pair, Brandt made his way to the vestibule
where a man lay in a pool of bright red blood. The guy was decked out, head to
toe, literally with a skullcap and everything, in a reflective black material.
Heat shielding material. That was how he was masked from the Pentagon’s
infrared sensors.
    If he hadn’t already been shot, Brandt probably would have
shot himself for his stupidity. Of course the Knot would place a guard on the
RPG position. Because, of course, Brandt would make a beeline to the RPG
position and take the higher ground.
    More shots rang out behind them as the other gun men tried
to breach the Taj’s main door.
    “Oh, my God,” Rebecca whispered as the moonlight filtered in
through the elaborate grates that served as windows. Her horrified face glowed
with an almost supernatural beauty.
    “It’s not that bad,” Brandt said, removing his hand away
from the bullet wound in his side. And actually, he wasn’t lying. Only a
trickle of blood dripped off his belt.
    * * *
    Brandt was such a bad liar. That gunshot had to hurt like a
mo.’ But she wasn’t talking about his injury, or even the men trying to break
their way into the monument. She was talking about the monitor in the dead
man’s hand. He hadn’t just taken a lucky shot. He had something to aim at.
    “Don’t touch it,” Brandt said figuring out she was staring
at the handheld Gamma monitor.
    Rebecca would not make the same mistake she had made back at
the restaurant. Clearly, the Knot’s equipment was rigged to go off if the
biometric locks weren’t reset. No, she knelt beside the Gamma screen, looking
at the faintest wisp of a reading.
    Her reading. She had drunk far more champagne than Brandt
had.
    “How can that be?” Brandt asked, gripping his side again. “We
ate the damn fish crap.”
    Some of the Gamma must have leaked into her blood stream
before the activated charcoal could absorb the radiation. Which normally would
have diluted the signal. Not so great for her health, but it should have masked
the reading. Her hand flew to her neck. Her thyroid gland. It was scavenging
the radiation and concentrating it there, producing the blip on the screen.
    “We don’t know it’s you,” Brandt protested, but she backed a
step, then another. The blip moved with her.
    She was a shining beacon. Once those men broke in…
    Rebecca let go of the panic and turned to Brandt. She had a
plan.
    “Love is eternal.”
    * * *
    “No, no, no, no, no,” Brandt said as she sprinted down the
hallway.
    Damn it. He loved her too, but he wasn’t too fond of her
making herself an active target. Rebecca was using the same decoy technique