The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(199)
“Fuck you.”
“Whoa ho ho! The man’s a sore spot already. And just from a driver’s license photo. Good thing you never saw his biceps. You’d be inconsolable.”
Hannah shot him a murderous glare. From the moment Evan showed his cruel and juvenile face, she sensed an odd frustration behind his loathing. He wanted to do so much more to her than he was currently doing. Clearly it wasn’t his conscience holding him back.
“My iPod wasn’t a gift,” she speculated. “It was a bribe. Azral doesn’t want you hurting us.”
Evan narrowed his eyes in pique. The woman could be jarringly sharp when she wanted to be. He scrambled for cover behind a sneering grin.
“Nice thought, Giggles, but Azral didn’t care when I killed Jury. He won’t shed a tear over you. By the way, I have to know. Are you still carrying his license? You can tell me.”
“No.”
“Liar. Come on. I know you’re keeping Jury near your naughty bits. Show me.”
“Would anyone shed a tear if you died, Evan?”
“You would.”
“I’d cry with joy.”
“That counts.” He raised his jolter. “Now are you going to empty your pockets or do I need to make you fork over your pants?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That’s what this is all about.”
“Getting in your pants?” Evan cackled with scorn. “Oh sweet Jesus. The ego on you. If I wanted that, hon, there are easier ways. Spreading your legs is the fastest thing you do.”
“For men like Jury,” she seethed. “Not like you.”
“Amazing how you’re proud of your shallow standards.”
“Is that why you killed him?”
“Don’t play detective, Boopsie. You’re out of your element.”
“You told Zack you used to be part of our group. You and Jury both.”
Evan sighed with ennui. It was always so tedious to watch the Silvers play catch-up.
“In times undone,” he told her. “Days gone bye-bye. Don’t mistake my wistful look for nostalgia. The memories aren’t fond.”
“What did I do to make you so angry?”
He checked the screen of his handtop. All right. Finally.
“The question you should be asking right now . . .”
He pressed a button on his console.
“. . . is what did she do?”
Hannah spun around in her cage, just as her sister collapsed in front of the open door.
“Amanda!”
Forty minutes ago, Evan had stashed a video camera and an electron chaser in the planter outside the law office. The moment Amanda hobbled into range, he remotely activated the weapon’s charge. In an instant, the widow’s world went red with pain and her muscles turned to jelly.
Evan dragged her inside and closed the door behind them. Hannah shook the bars of her cage. “Stop it! Leave her alone!”
“Hush now, darling. Screaming time is over.” He snickered derisively. “I swear, you two are so easy to trap. Just a shame it took Peter’s Cotton Tail so long to hop her way over here. We’re a little behind schedule.”
His synchron watch beeped its noon chime. Evan adjusted the handtop to access his lobby cameras.
“Yup. There it goes.”
Hannah eyed him confusedly. “What are you talking about?”
“The barricade,” he replied, with a savage grin. “The Deps are storming the castle.”
—
At the stroke of noon, the tempic sheath around the building fell to the government’s solic drill. The glass doors shattered at the edge of a metal battering ram.
Rosie Herrera shouted a staccato barrage of orders as she led the charge to the lobby. Her motormouth zeal was fueled half by adrenaline and half by fear that Melissa would try to seize control of the operation. To Rosie’s surprise, the eccentric agent from L.A. followed the crowd in demure silence. Once she reached the first bloodstain, Melissa uttered a single word.
“Shift.”
Eight armored speedsuits lit up with a crosshatch of bright red lines as their wielders jumped to maximum velocity. A temporal voice converter in each helmet allowed the team to communicate with their unshifted brethren, though Melissa had quietly disabled those devices nine minutes ago. The speeding elites were now isolated in their own headset network, Melissa’s to command by default rank protocol. Sorry, Rosie. It’s easier this way.
“Fan out,” she ordered them. “Search every corner. You see a fugitive, shoot them in the gut, even if they raise their hands in surrender. These people are never unarmed. And I assure you they have no intention of coming quietly.”
The men dispersed in streaking blurs. Melissa moved to the elevator bank and studied the two young corpses on the floor. They looked like they’d been gored by rhinos. No sword or lance could have killed them this brutally.
Tempis, she thought, with sinking dread. God help you if you did this, Amanda. God—
—
—help me.
Amanda lay chest-down on the carpet, her slender frame convulsing with shudders. Her wall-hugging hop down the hallway had been the single most agonizing experience of her life, until Evan’s chaser set every nerve ablaze. Now she was a prisoner of her own fractured body, a tiny creature in a cage of screaming flesh.