Shane Read online

  Walking into the hotel room, Shelly stopped and eyed the suite. She looked at Shane and said, “You guys must be doing well.”

  “There’s lots of money,” he said. “It’s just a matter of utilizing it for what we need it for.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, but it made sense to her. She remembered one of the lessons she had learned at a previous company, when she had asked what she had for spending money. They told her that, if she needed it, it was okay. And she realized that meant that, if she didn’t need it, it wasn’t okay. It was an honor system. Order what you need, and don’t abuse it. She’d taken that to heart and hadn’t questioned what she had needed after that. But here, she had no clue what was needed. More clothes would be nice, but she had several outfits, and she could always do laundry. She sat down in one of the big overstuffed chairs and looked around. “It’s a nice suite,” she said.

  “We could be here for a few days,” he said.

  “Can you make things happen here that fast?”

  He snorted. “I can make things happen here that fast,” he said, “without a doubt.”

  She nodded slowly and said, “This is a side of you that I’ve never seen before.”

  “And you may never see it again either,” he said cheerfully.

  She smiled. “Actually I kind of like it.”

  He rolled his eyes at that. “What’s to like?” he said. “It’s still just me.”

  “Yes, but this is the work persona,” she said. “I always knew the fun off-work persona before.”

  “Still the same guy.”

  She shrugged. “It is, but it isn’t.”

  He just laughed. “Now you’re making things more complicated than they need to be.”

  “Sorry, but it’s still a fascinating look into who you are.”

  At that, he stopped and turned and said, “No, really. Don’t misunderstand here. This is still just me.”

  She nodded. “I know, and I get that. It’s just another side I haven’t seen before.” She saw that she’d worried him with this, but he didn’t have time to deal with it. She waved her hand and said, “Get back to work.”

  He stared at her and said, “You’re still bossy. You know that, right?”

  “But you love me anyway,” she said. “Do we get room service here?”

  “Order whatever you want,” he said.

  She rubbed her hands together. “Oh, for a steak.”

  “Still on delivery? Thought you didn’t like that.”

  She stopped and frowned. “No, you’re right. It’s not the same. But it would be better than a take-out order.”

  “It would be,” he said, “but maybe leave that idea about a steak until we’re done with all this.”

  “Then I’ll walk outside and find a fish and chip shop.”

  “I wouldn’t push it,” he said. “Nobody’s going out right now.”

  “Right,” she said and groaned. “Fine, so we’re back to room service.” She picked up the brochure and said, “Well, at least they have some decent choices but, wow, the prices.”

  “Forget about that,” he said. “Just order what you want. For all of us. We’ll eat it.”

  At that, she smiled. “Right, got it.” She went through the menu, quickly ordered coffee, and then ordered a nice seafood pasta dish for everybody, with garlic bread. By the time she ordered, she said, “That’ll take a little time to get here. I’ll have a shower and cool down a bit.”

  “Go for it.”

  She took one last look at the two men, both sitting at the table, laptops open, moving through their phones and their laptops, totally focused on the tasks at hand. She shook her head. “This is just business as usual, I guess,” she muttered.

  “Nothing usual about this at all,” Shane said, looking up. “But, yes, it’s business, and we will handle it just like we need to.”

  “Right.” Feeling out of sorts and not knowing why, yet still like the odd man out and unable to help, she stepped into a hot shower. After a long day of those damn transatlantic flights, it was a relief to be on dry land again. She’d slept a lot, which should help with the time change, but she knew it would take a few days for her to really adjust.

  She didn’t know about Shane and Diesel, but they looked like they were raring to go already. She wondered about the adrenaline required to keep going on a steady basis for a job like this. She knew what it was like, when she was on a big job, and they were setting up communication systems and marketing plans for a new company. A certain amount of adrenaline kept her going, going, going. And then, all of a sudden, it was over, and it was almost a letdown. Not a letdown in the sense that she was disappointed, but all that adrenaline had no place to go, and it took her days to recover. She figured that this was what was happening here.

  She wondered what Shane planned to do when this was all over with and when the recovery happened. She’d love to spend some time with him and have a vacation or something. Hell, maybe they could go away someplace, though, when she thought about it, she hadn’t been to London in years. Maybe they could just stay here for a while.

  And she had to figure out what she would do about her job. When her phone buzzed, she noted an email from the cops, looking at her to answer some questions about the shootings at her old company, she winced. She hadn’t told them that she had left the country. When she was dried off and dressed and returned to the main room, braiding her shoulder-length hair on the side of her head, she brought it up. “I got an email from the cops,” she said. “They want me to come in for questioning.”

  “Well, that won’t happen,” Shane said.

  “Didn’t we get told not to leave town?” she asked.

  “Nope, we did not,” he murmured, but he didn’t lift his head from his computer work.

  “Will I be in trouble for leaving?”

  “No,” he said. “Forward me the email, and I’ll take care of it.”

  Not knowing what else to do, she quickly forwarded it to him. As she’d asked for the coffee right away and for room service to deliver the meals in a little while, she was hoping the coffee was already here. She opened the front door and stepped out into the hallway, and almost instantly Shane was right there beside her. She looked up in surprise.

  “I was just looking for the coffee,” she said. He turned her around gently and led her back inside. She sighed. “That bad, huh?”

  “He killed eleven people as a test,” he said. “How bad does it need to get?”

  She winced at the reminder. “I guess I’m just out of sorts,” she said. “I want to help, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do. I don’t even know how your system works, so I don’t—I can’t do anything,” she said. “All I see is the people I used to work with, and now even looking for a new job seems wrong. It’s like a betrayal of everything they went through.”

  “All you can do at this point in time is look after yourself,” he said. “That’s the one thing that’s important to me. I brought you here to keep you safe. You’ve been through a rough time already.”

  She sagged into the chair. “I get that,” she said, looking down at her hands and then back up at him. “I’m just not used to being idle.”

  “Let’s put you to work then,” he said, walking to the table and snatching a pad of paper and a pen. “Write down every connection between us that you could possibly think of where someone would have seen us together.”

  “Wow,” she said. “You mean people and places?”

  “Yes.”

  “Since kindergarten?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can try,” she said, “but that’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “Then find all the pictures on the internet with you and I together.”

  As much as they had a lot in motion, they didn’t have enough quite yet. Shane looked at Diesel a couple hours later. “We should have had some deliveries by now.”

  He looked at his watch. “I think they’re on
the way.”

  “Dammit, I don’t have time for delays,” Shane said. “I’ll go get ready, so we can leave as soon as everything arrives.”

  Diesel looked at Shelly, who was nodding asleep on the bed. “What about her?”

  “I’ve got that taken care of,” he said. He looked at Diesel and winced. “I did something I wouldn’t normally do,” he murmured, “but we had to contact MI6 anyway.”

  “Ow, ouch,” he said. “Stepping on their toes is getting to be a habit.”

  “And they are a resource we can’t afford to burn,” he said. “So I brought them in on it, and they’re supplying an officer to look after her.”

  “That’s actually a good solution,” he said.

  At that, Shane headed to the bathroom and quickly got changed. Then he swiped on a layer of some of the military’s latest face paint on his exposed skin, to reduce his facial signature, until he was out of the public eye and could don his black ski mask. The trick was to be invisible, to cut down his heat signature, to stop his face from reflecting moonlight, streetlights, etc.

  When he came back out, it was Diesel’s turn.

  Shane saw the gear that he’d ordered had arrived, as well as the officer from MI6. Shane quickly put on his bulletproof vest. Now, dressed in black from top to bottom, it would get him where he needed to go. The black gear worked best at night in cityscapes, if he kept to the shadows. Or for tunnels under the city. However, in a jungle, camo was better. In the water, an invisibility cloak, aka the mirage effect, was pretty handy.

  Once he had the gloves snapped on, he quickly loaded up his backpack and filled his pockets with the rest of what he needed. With his phone tucked into the chest pocket, he looked at Diesel. He was fully outfitted as well. With a quick nod, Shane said, “We’ll have to wipe out everything in the hallway.”

  “I’ve got that,” said the MI6 operative, standing off to the side. “Gimme twenty seconds.”

  It was as late as they could leave and still hit their timeline. It was only ten p.m., but, as Shane opened the door, the lights in the hallway went out. The operative said, “You’ve got just ten minutes to get down to the bottom.” And, with that, Shane and Diesel booked it. As soon as the door closed behind them, they raced down and out.

  It wasn’t long before they followed the pathway into the world beneath the street. The world of deliveries, the world of sewers, the world of underground trains. A world that most people didn’t deal with. But a whole subset of the population reveled down here.

  Shane might need some of their help, but what he definitely needed was a pathway to the building in question. They had all the intel they needed, at least he hoped so. He knew it wouldn’t be as smooth as it could be because nobody had final answers for what the scenario would look like. He might have to come back, rethink the plan. But, more than that, he might have to request more gear to be delivered down here. MI6 was involved, and they would have somebody waiting topside at one of the turnstiles.

  That was the agreement. He’d uphold it. He still didn’t like it, but business was business. As he came around another corner in the underground tunnel, he held up a hand, as somebody was in front of them, his back to them. Shane quickly checked his phone to see a text message from MI6.

  You’re almost there. Two hundred yards ahead is our man.

  Sending a message back, Shane typed, We’re already there. He walked forward ever-so-slowly. The operative straightened, turned and looked at him, nodded and picked up the pace. They fell into step behind him, not a word spoken. As they raced underground toward the building in question, Shane could only hope that Shelly would understand, when she woke up and realized he wasn’t there, that he couldn’t stick around. They had a tight schedule as it was.

  It wasn’t the time or the place for that kind of goodbye, but he hoped that she knew that he would miss her no matter what. He could only hope he would make it back again. But he would do what he had to just to save her, just as he would to save his sister and the rest of her family. The fact that Shane had had his chain yanked by this asshole just made him even madder. On the other hand, the rage kept his footsteps moving in a steady beat underground.

  When the operative finally came to a stop, he pointed up ahead, and, in a low voice, he said, “One hundred yards up, take a left,” he said. “Then ten more yards and you’re right beneath it.”

  “Got it.” They moved past him without anything else being said. Shane didn’t know if the agent would try to follow them and insert himself into their operation or if he would just keep an eye on them as they went. As soon as they got around the corner and up ahead, Diesel closed the gap between them and said, “He put a tracker on your back.”

  “Of course he did,” Shane said, in a sarcastic tone. “What the hell? But I guess I’d rather have a tracker than actually have them on our tail. We’ll leave it for now. If we drop it too quickly, they’ll come ruin the operation.”

  “I guess that’s what cooperation stands for these days,” Diesel said.

  “Hey, as hard we had to argue to avoid getting a whole team of theirs involved,” he said, “we’ll take what we can get.”

  “Still sucks though.”

  “Yep, it does. But let’s go rescue this woman and see if we can get our asses home again.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be the next problem,” he said.

  “What sucks is that we’re open for all kinds of different problems, but we won’t know what they are until we get there.” And, with that, his footsteps slowed. They were at the marker that they had been directed to. They had passed through several steel doors into train passages, through sewers, and now they were literally standing at a ladder to a manhole that would lead them to the surface. But it would take them outside the building. Shane wanted to remain underground a bit farther.

  Checking his GPS as he moved forward, he said, “So this is it. The outside of the building where she is. Now we have to find a way up from here.”

  “Well, the sewer’s here,” he said, “but it’s all piped.”

  “I know,” he said. He moved forward as the schematic showed and said, “This heads into the loading bay.”

  “And that’s where the wall’s the thinnest,” Diesel said. “We could take a surface route and go into the loading bay from that direction, but there are cameras,” he said.

  “We could drill from underneath.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I was thinking of a hot torch, but getting through all that concrete will be rough.”

  “We have what we need, even C-4, which will give us a small pop, and completely weaken that area. But it’ll go sideways,” Shane said, “so no structural damage.”

  “Well, there’ll be some,” Diesel said, with a nod, “but it won’t bring down the building.”

  “Still not sure it’s the answer though.” They had climbed up one level, so they were sitting at what should be on the other side of the loading bay. “Look at this,” Shane said, scuffing his feet in some debris. “It’s concrete, but it’s crumbling.” He made a fist and pounded into the concrete wall off to the side, watching more powder fall to the ground.

  “Too much water in the mix,” Diesel said, “or the wall was repaired.”

  “Either way, it’s likely to be the weakest spot.” They quickly checked the rest of it, then, with that decision made, they set up C-4, intended to blast the smallest hole that would do the job into the side wall, preferably not even going all the way through because they didn’t want to announce their arrival just yet. They moved back and waited for the charge to go off.

  Boom!

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Shane muttered, as he quickly moved forward. It had definitely weakened the wall and even taken it all the way out in one spot. Using his hand, he pulled back the broken concrete and cleared a spot to see through. The room on the other side was dark. “No lights on here,” he said. “We need to get through this as fast as we can.” Pulling out a small sledge hammer he had brought along, he crac
ked down on the last of the concrete obscuring their way and climbed through headfirst.

  As he slid to the other side, he realized the drop was a little farther than he thought. They were actually higher up. That would work well for hiding the hole but made getting back up here much more of a hardship. He studied it for a long moment, then gave the all clear for Diesel to come through. As he did, Shane said, “Set your grappling hooks before you drop, so we can get out of here. It’s higher than I expected.”

  They left lines coiled up in the hole that they should knock down a bit more in order to get back up and out again. They used their flashlights and quickly checked out the area. They were in a loading bay, with huge garage doors on the left. Boxes, forklifts, crates, pallets, and all the usual materials were on the right and in front of them. Keeping close to the perimeter, they maneuvered all the way to the innermost wall and to the first interior door.

  According to the schematics they had accessed, this should be a way into the main lower level. The door was locked, but they took care of that easily. Less than two minutes later they were already deeper inside. They stopped because this area wasn’t shown on the schematic. It was more hallways and small rooms. According to the schematic it should have been one big room, storage for all the material on the inside. But considering they had accessed a small door, they should have realized something was amiss. Modifications done after the sale, Shane thought.

  They forged ahead, checking room after room. Nobody appeared to be in the building. This area was dark. Yet they weren’t seeing any security cameras on the floor at all. But, then again, it was one of the lower levels, and often no security was down here anyway. Separating, they quickly searched the entire downstairs and found nothing. Both of them frowned, as they joined up again, and took the stairs up to the next floor. This was slightly below ground level, with half the windows at ground height. They went through this floor and again found nothing, no sign of anybody or even that the building had been occupied in a long time.

  With his heart sinking, afraid that their intel had been bad, Shane and Diesel made their way up to the next floor. Here were at least signs of humans. This was the first floor aboveground, and they approached cautiously. Nobody was at the reception area, nobody in the hallway or around the elevators. Shane tilted his head, putting up a fist to stop Diesel from rushing forward.