White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2)(19)

“Stop screwing with it,” Bug’s voice said.

“It’s distracting.” Her voice carried traces of Louisiana. “I don’t like distracting.”

“It the best tech on the market,” Bug said. “And you broke the last two, Luanne.”

“They were also distracting.”

“Do you see the care in my eye?”

Luanne looked athletic and strong, and the way she held herself projected a dispassionate calm. Not serenity, just a quiet, competent alertness devoid of any emotional connection. I’d met her type before. She was a professional private soldier. You would look into her eyes and see nothing, and then she’d shoot you in the face, and as the bullets were flying, you’d still see nothing. It didn’t reach her, maybe because of her experience or perhaps it just never did. In everyday life, she’d look completely normal. You’d see her at the supermarket and never imagine that she could kill people for a living.

Behind her men and women in identical garb were checking their weapons.

“What kind of a vest is that?” I asked. It looked segmented under the grey fabric, as if made of small hexagonal sections. Flexible too. The hexagons shifted slightly as Luanne moved.

“That’s a Scorpion V,” Bug said. “Latest, greatest, classified, and civilians aren’t supposed to have them, so don’t see it or we’ll have to gouge your eyes out.”

“No heroics, Luanne,” Rogan said off camera. “I just want to know what they’re trading. Get in, stay alive, get out.”

“With all due respect, Major, this isn’t my first dance,” Luanne said.

“Major worries,” a younger man with a freckled face said as he rested a firearm on his lap. Heckler & Koch MP7.

I glanced at Rogan. His face was blank.

“Major always worries,” an older man said.

“It’s our job to prove that he’s worried for nothing, Watkins.” Luanne turned and the view swung to a group of private soldiers. “Time to earn the big money.”

The screen split into four, each feed attached to a different soldier.

“Fast forward,” Rogan said quietly.

The recording sped up. They divided into four huge black Tahoes, picked up the lawyers—putting them only into two Tahoes—and took separate routes to the hotel. The video slowed to normal speed. We watched them get out and escort two men and two women, all in Scorpion bulletproof vests, into the hotel, where another private soldier met them at the door. Rogan’s team must’ve scouted the location beforehand and done a walk-through.

As the lawyers were hustled into the hotel, the recording caught the taller woman’s face.

Cornelius took a sharp breath.

She was about twenty-eight or so, Asian, possibly of Korean descent, with a round face and large smart eyes that looked just like her daughter’s. Worry twisted her face. She seemed so alive there on the recording.

I was watching a dead person walking.

The lawyers and the private security people moved into the building. Four went ahead. The group directly responsible for the lawyers’ lives followed, clearing the hotel’s corridors in the “hallway” formation: one guard in front, the other slightly behind to his left, then the lawyers, then the third guard on the right and the final guard almost exactly behind the first. From above it would look like a rectangle set on a corner. Four remaining guards brought up the rear. They moved fast, took the stairs instead of the elevator, and arrived at a suite on the second floor. Another private solider, a woman this time, stood at the doors of the suite.

“Any security on the outside?” I asked.

“There are two people,” Rogan said. “One on the building northwest, covering the entrance, and one on the museum’s roof to the north, covering the two windows.”

Thorough. He’d covered the exit and the windows, so if anyone or anything that presented a threat tried to enter the hotel, his people would know instantly and neutralize it. I never took any private security jobs, but back when my father was alive, he and my mother had insisted I take a course on it at a training facility in Virginia. From what I could remember, Rogan’s people had crossed every t and dotted every i.

The lawyers and their bodyguards filed into a spacious suite. A dark coffee table—some sort of wood, nearly black and sealed to a mirror shine—stood in the middle of the room, flanked by a dark grey sectional sofa and two chairs, one upholstered in royal purple and the other in zebra print. The lawyers sat down. Rogan’s people spread through the room, one by the dark red draperies, one by the door to the bathroom, and the rest by the walls, forming a killing field in front of the door. Four people stayed with the lawyers.

The four feeds on the split screen showed every angle of the room. On two of them Luanne’s face was clearly visible and she was frowning. She was looking at the window. What did she see . . . ?

Condensation. A thin layer of fog tinted the glass.

“Bug,” Luanne said quietly. “What’s the humidity in here?”

“Ninety-two percent.”

“What’s the humidity by Cole on the roof?”

“Seventy-eight.”

“Abort.” Luanne bit off the word. “Move them out now.”

The room iced over. In a blink a layer of ice sheathed the walls, the weapons, and the furniture.