The Life We Lead: Ascending Read Online Free PDF Page A

hushed
voice.
    Landing, James peered up, wondering what was
wrong.
    Daen’s head appeared. “Petior just walked
into the lobby.” He dropped James a microphone pack and went back
in the room.
    James hooked up the earpiece, digesting this
piece of information. “What do you see?”
    “He’s still at the desk, probably trying to
get a room number. What do you want to ... Damn. One of the guys
left the room and is walking toward the desk. They’re shouting. I
can hear them through the floor.”
    “I am breaching the room, taking out the
remaining man with the flash, and will join you in the lobby. Go
now,” said James. Turning his back to the building, he detonated
the flashes with his eyes shut.
    Bang.
    One count, and James pushed open the window
he’d unlocked and climbed in the room. He could hear noise in the
lobby, but he had to take down the guy in the room. He quickly
crossed over to the man. Obviously blinded from the flash, the man
was holding his ears and grimacing.
    James considered a sleeping hold but didn’t
have time.
    Crack, crack.
    James hit the man in the jaw twice, hard
enough to dislocate it, and the guy dropped to the floor. James
took out his gun. He barely had a foot in the hallway when he saw
Daen running out the front door. 
    James followed, but before he reached the
door, Daen was speaking into the earpiece.
    “The clerk and the guy that came out of room
nine grabbed Petior. Saw them take him out the side door that is
next to the revolving door. They shoved him in a black sedan and
took off. I have the plate. You okay?”
    James knew Daen was smart enough not to give
chase. The idea of trying to chase a vehicle in an area you don’t
know isn’t an action a member of the group would consider. It was
pointless if you didn’t have the ability to stop the vehicle.
    “Fine. I have one more guy in the room. Hey!”
James exclaimed as he rounded the corner and reentered room nine.
The man was attempting to escape out the window.
    “Bryan, alley!” James shouted as he sprinted
across the room and out the window.
    The man staggered to his feet in a weak
attempt to flee as James tackled him, dropping his knee into the
man’s back in the snow and wrist-locking him to the middle of his
own shoulder blades.
    And there it was. What he had felt coming was
here. And now that it was, James could trace it, like the others,
to a dream he’d had.
    When Daen arrived, he used a zip tie from his
pack to quickly secure the man’s hands. James stuffed a bit of
fabric from the man’s shirt into his mouth and they hustled him
back inside room nine through the window, letting him fall on his
head.
    “Go see if there is a real front desk clerk
tied up, then come back. We need to minimize potential
witnesses.”
    Daen left without a word, shutting the door
behind him. James propped the bound man in a chair, closed the
window, and turned to study him.
    Now that James considered him, the guy wasn’t
that old. In fact, he had to be two or maybe three years younger
than himself. James pulled out the gun, made sure the safety was
on, and pointed it at him.
    He looked familiar, especially something
around the cheeks, but the left side of his face was rather swollen
and James couldn’t place him.
    The man looked around nervously. Enough of
his senses had come back that he knew he was in trouble.
    “Do you speak English?” James asked.
    The man looked around even more
frantically.
    “Do you speak English?” James repeated with
more force.
    The man nodded, continuing to look around the
room.
    “If you make any noise or yell, I’ll shoot
you in the head. I’m going to remove the gag. Do you understand?”
James looked the young man in the eyes.
    The man stared at James for a moment before
giving a single nod.
    James approached him with his gun in a back
stance and got just close enough to remove the cloth with a tug
before taking two steps back. He wasn’t secured to the chair, and
James was going cautiously