“I have people here who willgutyou—” Kadjic began, but Molly strode in, her blond plait swinging behind her.
“And they are no longer mobile,” she said with satisfaction.“Right, little brother?”
“Infrared indicates we got them all,” Stirling said, striding in through the hallway Josh and Grace had come through.Apparently, while Josh and Grace had pussyfooted through the house, overwhelmed by the beauty, the rest of their party had been absolutely fed up with all that had come before.
“You…,” Kadjic muttered, staring at Molly.“You—you’ve been…you’rethe one we’ve been looking for.You’reeverywhere!A blond woman—”
“Or man!”Tienne said cheerfully, at Stirling’s side.
“Andyou!”Kadjic returned his ire—and his obsession—to Josh.“Youwere at the party.Whoareall of you?”
“We’re the orphans you created,” Molly said.
“I’m the boy you tried to kill,” Tienne added.
“We’re the soldiers who fought against people like you,” Chuck said with a nod at Hunter.
“I’m the insurance guy who had to clean up your messes,” Carl said, his voice light even as he kneed the muscle in the throat for trying to take him down.
“And I’m the son of the man you tried to kill in an alleyway in Morocco,” Josh said.“And I’m the man who’s been planning the heists that have plagued your hopes all summer.Did you think nobody loved him, Kadjic?Did you think you could wreak the kind of destruction you have, all over the globe, and not earn yourself some enemies?”
Kadjic was focused on all of them, but Josh was concentrating behind him on Danny, who had locked eyes with Julia, and on the shadows, passing between the waterfall and the glass.
“Now?”she murmured, and Josh realized that she, Danny, and whoever was casting those shadows beyond the window must have been mic’d.
“Now,” Danny said with conviction.“Give it up, Andrejevic.You have nowhere to go.Interpol is on its way, and according to our accounting, you have flat run out of the collateral to pay off your network to get you out of it.You’re done.You don’t even have enough to start over.”
“I’ll destroyallof you—”
“Withwhat?”And for the first time, Danny’s voice rose.“We’ve taken you, Andres.We’ve ruined your businesses, stripped you of your reputation.You have enough money to live well, perhaps, so perhaps you should flee into the hills to lick your wounds.”He shook his head.“But you’ll never be great again.Nobody will want you.I at least thought you were a good time when I was drunk and heartbroken and looking for death.But how much fun are you now?We took your crime, and can you see what’s left?An obscene, sagging, lonely little man, and nobody,nobody, will even miss you when you’re go—”
With a roar, and movements too quick to be halted, Andres Kadjic charged into Danny, and the two of them crashed through the window and out into the three-hundred-foot drop to the mountainous rocks below.
The glass cutter Danny had been wielding behind his back clattered to the floor as he disappeared.
Catch You, Catch You, Catch You if You Fall.
“READY?”FELIXcalled, and Liam wanted to scream, “No!”But he couldn’t.His ribs blazing, it was all he could do to hold on to the guywire that kept him from pitching off the side of the house.
The water was falling fast, but there was not as much of it as it seemed.The house was obscured from the front but not hidden, and while working in the cold and the wet was difficult and slippery, Leon had produced some gloves and boots from Carl’s van that made traction easier.
“I figured we would be working underwater,” Leon said cheerfully.“We weren’t sure which van would be where.I put them in both.”
In passing, Liam thought the man was an amazing father.
Given a direction and a general vicinity, Tor had produced miracles.An hour after he’d signed off with Liam, the information had started pouring through the computer—specs, security systems, entrances and exits.Liam had passed it on, and in the remaining hour of the trip—all of them holding a ten-minute distance from Kadjic’s town car lest the caravan of headlights alert him on what was essentially a deserted mountain road—they had determined the best points of egress.
There weren’t many.A main door and the garage itself.
And the only window was the giant bay window overlooking the canyon.
And then, as they’d approached the edifice, a light had come on, making the house glow like a jewel behind the veil of water.
Two figures could be seen arguing, and Stirling, who had muted Danny’s comms during the ride so they could talk and not distract Danny as he verbally fenced with an alligator, spoke into Danny’s ear.
“We’re coming.We’re infiltrating the house in two minutes.”
“Silently,” he said subvocally.“I need an out through the window.”
