Wicked Lies: A Dark Mission Novella Read Online Free PDF

background accompaniment—the steady click of fingers on keys—had been a facet of every part of his life for as long as he could remember.
    “So Grams found a protégé, huh?” he asked, his breath tight in his throat. His body struggled to keep going. Muscles cramped, his balance wavered, but Danny forced himself to go. Foot after foot. Step by step.
    He turned right.
    “I don’t know about that,” Jonas replied, somehow managing to sound as if his full attention remained on that fine, ephemeral frequency straining between them. And not, like Danny was sure it was, on whatever string of gobbledygook he typed into his computer. “But I found you, and that’s all that matters.”
    Danny couldn’t help himself. “I love a man with tunnel vision.”
    The muffled sound in his ear could have been a snort. Or a gasp.
    Then, “You’re leaving my view, Danny. Be careful. According to my plans, you’ve got about thirteen feet before you reach a door.”
    “Is it clear?”
    “Everyone’s in briefing. Whatever happened, it surprised the hell out of them.”
    “It surprised the hell out of me,” Danny retorted.
    “We’ll take what we can get. There should be a door.”
    There was. “Door,” Danny confirmed as he came up against a dark panel the same gray as everything else. After this, he was going to go on a crusade against the godforsaken color.
    “On it.” More clicking. More digital magic, he figured.
    Danny waited, because he knew what kind of miracles people like his grandmother could pull. He studied the panel set into the wall beside the door, the sensor that would probably shriek a warning if he tampered with it.
    Reaching behind him, he rubbed the back of his head at the same time as he stretched the aching muscles along his side. They cramped, twanging a warning along every nerve in his side and sending his breath hissing from between his teeth.
    The focused clatter of keys hitched. “Are you okay, Danny?”
    “Ask me that in about an hour.” He shook his head. “No, wait. Get me a bath, then ask me that.”
    “Yes, sir,” came the light— too light —response. The echo of his keyboard subtly shifted in speed. Faster. “How would you like that water?”
    “Scalding.” Danny let his eye close. Let the darkness fill his head. Just for a moment. “Filled with bubbles and a green-eyed pool boy. You busy?”
    A snort, this time. Definitely a snort. “Not on your life, kid. And—there,” he added before Danny could pin anything or even try . “Go through.”
    The door clicked once more as if the mysterious Jonas with the sexy tenor stood behind some curtain and directed the composition of Danny’s escape. Tumblers rolled back, hinges sprang into motion. The automated door swung wide.
    Danny barely made it half a step before a gun knocked neatly between his eyebrows.
    His heart plummeted into his toes.

 
    Chapter Three
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    “D ANNY?”
    Gripping the edge of the desk, Jonas didn’t notice that his knuckles popped. Threatened to tear through the fragile skin gone white from the pressure.
    No visual. Not there. That was half the reason he’d chosen the side door as part of his exit strategy. Alan Eckhart had known about the weakness in the Mission’s surveillance, so he made damn sure to patch it up with manpower until he could get the building budgeted for a rewire.
    Not once in Jonas’s fifteen-year career did they ever have to handle a break-in.
    But the Church’s secret operatives killed Eckhart in their bloody coup, and as far as Jonas could tell, they hadn’t considered the implications of the weakness.
    A weakness that may have just gotten Danny killed.
    Nothing filtered through the suddenly quiet comm. Nothing but a muffled rasp.
    “Danny?” He leaned toward the useless monitor, each segment showing footage he didn’t need anymore. His heart thudded in his throat, too tight. Too heavy. “Danny!”
    “Yo.”
    Jonas’s breath rocked out before he could stop it. That