Page 27 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

7

The Distance

DAX

The rusted iron grate of the fire escape groans under my boots. The Bangkok downpour hits us the second we clear the motel window, a blinding deluge that soaks through the Kevlar and plasters my hair flat against my skull. The monsoon doesn't care about the sweep tearing through the building below. The rain falls in sheets, turning the metal stairs into a slick hazard.

Every step upward is a negotiation with gravity and the storm. The iron rails are coated in slick algae, offering zero purchase. Lily slips twice in the first ten feet, exhaustion in the ragged hitch of her breath. I lock my hand around her wrist and haul her upward, refusing to let the storm slow our ascent.

A crash echoes from the room below us as the door to 404 splinters under a breaching kick. The muscle didn't pull out after all—the police cordon sealed the streets, boxing them inside the building, and trapped men get thorough. Angry shouts bleed through the roar of the rain, the harsh consonants of Thai carrying the cadence of the same crew that swept the hallway. They found the empty shower stall. They found the shattered glass of the open window. We have less than thirty seconds before one of them leans out and owns a direct line of sight on the fire escape.

"Move." My gloved fingers stay locked around her wrist as we climb.

She matches my pace step for step after that, her soaked canvas gym bag slung across her chest, never once looking down at the drop to the alleyway below.

We hit the flat, tar-papered roof just as combat boots clatter onto the lowest landing of the fire escape. I drag her away from the exposed ledge, throwing us both down behind the concrete housing of the industrial air-conditioning unit.

The rain is a deafening roar against the vibrating ductwork, masking our ragged breathing.

I unholster the 9mm I stripped off the stairwell hitters and press-check the chamber in the dark. A round seated. Back against the cold, wet concrete, I let my lungs burn off the sprint, the laceration along my ribs flaring white-hot. Pain is noise. Rain is noise. I tune both out the way I tuned out the screaming city before the shot.

The wall inside my mind is what needs rebuilding.

The heat of the mirrored bathroom is still burning through my veins. Her mouth hovering a fraction of an inch from mine shattered my discipline. I almost crossed the line. I almost let the attraction overwrite ten years of conditioning.

I'm a sniper. Distance is my religion. Distance is the only reason I'm still alive, and it's the only reason she's going to survive the night.

"Keep your head down." My voice is a rasp, stripped of the vulnerability that choked the air in the shower stall.

I shift my weight, rolling onto my stomach and peering around the concrete housing. Two men crest the edge of the fire escape, sweeping the roof with tactical flashlights. Disorganized. Sloppy. Local muscle hired to do the lifting for the main Consortium squads.

The beams sweep across the roof, missing the shadowed recess behind the AC unit.

"Clear," one of them shouts in Thai, his voice barely cutting through the storm. "They jumped to the next roof. Keep moving."

They scramble over the low parapet, leap across a narrow alleyway onto the adjacent building, and their flashlights disappear into the dark.

I lower the weapon. The immediate threat has passed, but our situation is a nightmare.

"They'll establish a perimeter within ten minutes." I push myself up off the wet tar. "Flood the district with hitters, block the arterials, put eyes in the air. We need off-the-grid transport and a secure uplink."

"Who are we calling?" She wrings the rain from her dark hair as she stands. "You said your task force was compromised. You said we were running blind."

"We are." I turn away from her, forcing the distance, refusing to look at the way the rain clings to her features. "The task force is compromised at the top. That doesn't mean the men are. Four of them will come the second Hutch clears them, and one of them has been dragging me out of holes like this since before you could vote." I check the arterials below us. "But none of them are here yet, and I need answers now. So we go outside the agency. A ghost in the machine. If there's anyone on the planet who can isolate the Consortium's routing data and find out where they took your friend, it's Ivy."

"Ivy." She repeats the name, a sliver of hope bleeding into her voice. "Where is she?"

"Not here. But I know a relay den in the lower undercity where we can establish an encrypted connection." I check the magazine of the 9mm. "Three miles from here. We take the rooftops. The streets are a fatal funnel."

I break cover without waiting for her acknowledgment, moving across the slick roof toward the rear parapet.

The gap between our roof and the adjacent building is wider here. Eight feet of empty air over a fatal drop to the alleyway. A calculated risk.

I step onto the low concrete wall, gauge the distance, and jump.

I land on the opposite roof, boots skidding on the wet gravel. I turn, ready to talk her through the jump.

She's already in the air.