The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

should.
    Mai Kitano was a shrewd operative, one of the best Japanese intelligence had to offer. She had to wonder how badly Kovalenko wanted the device. Was it as badly as she wanted her sister back?
    You don’t play roulette with your family. You get them back and get even later.
    Mai raised the rucksack. “I’ll let you have this when he steps out the door.”
    If it was anyone else, they might have tried to snatch it away. They might have bullied her a bit more. But they valued their lives, these goons, and they nodded as one.
    The one with the iPhone spoke into the microphone. “Do it. Walk outside.”
    Mai watched carefully as the picture jumped around, taking the focus away from her sister until a battered, metal door-frame came into view. Then, the outside of a tired-looking warehouse, somewhere badly in need of a paint job and a sheet metal worker.
    The camera retreated further. Street parking spaces came into view, and a large white sign that read Parking Garage . The red blur of a car flashed by. Mai felt her impatience begin to boil, and then the camera suddenly refocused back on the building and specifically to the right of the door, to reveal a battered, old plaque.
    A building number, and then the words: Southeast 1 st Street. She had her address.
    Mai dropped the rucksack and took off like a starving cheetah. The crowd melted away before her. Once outside, she ran to the nearest escalator, vaulted the railings, and landed sure footed about half-way down. She yelled and people jumped aside. She hit ground level at a sprint and reached the car she had carefully parked on Grand Ave.
    Turned the ignition. Slammed the stick shift into gear and floored the accelerator. Burned rubber out into the traffic flow of Tigertail Avenue and didn’t hesitate to take chances. As she wrenched at the wheel, she turned three-quarters of her attention to the Sat-Nav, punching the address in, heart hammering.
    The nav guided her onto SW 27th. With a straight road pointing north ahead of her, she literally jammed the pedal into the carpet. She was so focused she didn’t even think about what she would do when she reached the warehouse. A car ahead didn’t like her antics. It pulled out in front of her, tail-lights flashing. Mai slammed its rear fender, making the driver lose control and send his car slewing into a row of parked motorcycles. Bikes and helmets and shards of metal scattered in all directions.
    Mai narrowed her focus. Shop fronts and cars zipped past as blurry walls of tunnel vision. Pedestrians screamed at her. A biker was so shocked at her high-speed maneuvers he wobbled and fell off at a set of lights.
    The nav took her east on Flagler. The readout told her she’d be there in five minutes. A fish market was a haze of color to the left. A quick dogleg and she saw a sign that read SW1st Street.
    Fifty seconds later and the nav’s Irish accent declared: you have reached your destination.
     
    *****
     
    Even now, Mai took no major precautions. She remembered to lock the car and leave the keys behind the front, passenger side wheel. She sprinted over the road and found the plaque she’d seen a little while ago on the shaky camera.
    Now she took a breath to steel herself against what she might find. She closed her eyes, centered her balance, and calmed her fear and her fury.
    The handle turned freely. She walked through the threshold and quickly slipped to the left. Nothing had changed. The space was about fifty feet from the door to the back wall and about thirty feet wide. There were no furnishings. No pictures on the walls. No drapes on the windows. There were several glaring, hot banks of lights above her.
    Chika still sat tied to the chair at the back of the room, eyes bulging now as she fought to move. And fought, it was clear, to tell Mai something.
    But the Japanese Intelligence agent knew what to look for. She spotted half-a-dozen CCTV cameras positioned around the place and knew immediately who was