The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(106)
As they hit the floor, Priest scissored his legs in a wrestler's move that would have successfully gathered her into a submission hold had it not been for the quick twist of Janet’s flexible torso, a twist that whipped her left arm free. And in the small hand at the end of that arm, a hairpin glittered briefly as it plunged through Priest's right eye socket and into his skull.
His body twitched and then slid limply to the floor as she kicked him in the throat. Through the red-limned blackness in his head, Priest could hear Janet rise to her feet.
“Good night, sweet prince.”
Chapter 80
Mark froze. The scene below him unfolded so rapidly he barely had time to assimilate what was happening.
A man, who he only partially saw through the crack, suddenly charged into the room where Janet stood staring at her computer. She twisted, quick as a cat, partially connecting with her foot to his midsection before he hit her and they spun out of view. Before Mark could move to open the trapdoor and jump down to her aid, it was over.
Janet strode back into view looking as unruffled as if nothing had happened.
“Good night, sweet prince.”
The casual, flippant response, the way she barely glanced back over her shoulder, said more than her words. The man who had attacked her must be dead.
Janet picked up her cell phone and pressed a single key. After a couple of seconds, she spoke into it.
“Jack, I???ve had a situation here.” She paused for a moment. “No. I handled it, but I’ll need you to help me with the cleanup…Right. Just get here as quickly as possible.”
Snapping the phone shut, she turned, just in time to catch a feathered dart high in her left shoulder. Her look of surprise was quickly replaced with a slackness that spread to her arms and legs. The cell phone clattered to the floor as Janet followed it to the ground.
Instantly, the man was on her, ripping duct tape free from a roll and wrapping it several times around her hands and then her feet, placing another strip across her mouth.
“I guess it’s my turn to say good night to you,” he said with a low chuckle. “Don’t worry, little princess. You’ll have plenty of time to think about what went wrong over the coming days.”
Mark, who had been too stunned by this new development to move, jerked into motion, kicking open the trapdoor and leaping into the hallway below. As he landed, the man’s head snapped toward him, a long, wicked-looking knife appearing in his hand.
Seeing who faced him, a mirthless smile spread across the chiseled features of the man who stood over Janet’s prone form, not twenty feet away from Mark.
“Kid, I don’t know what you are doing here, but this isn’t your lucky day.”
Chapter 81
5:38 p.m. Crap. Heather had said she would be back by now. The tardiness worried Jennifer. It filled her mind with strange imaginings that left her knees shaky and made her wish she hadn’t just eaten half a bag of potato chips. What was going on?
Could Heather have been hit by a car on the way home? What if she was in the hospital? Or worse yet, what if she was hurt and no one even knew to go look for her?
It was all silly. No doubt Jennifer’s imagination was just inventing things because of the thought of Heather going to the prom with that creepy Raul. And yes, he was creepy. Him and that bunch of losers he hung around with. That didn’t apply to Heather, of course. But the others were some seriously odd birds.
Jennifer glanced at her watch again. 5:39 p.m. Damn it. One thing was for sure: she couldn’t just stand around letting worry drive her crazy. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt anything to bike over to Raul’s house and meet Heather. It would actually be fun to ride back with her.
Jennifer stuck her head into the kitchen. “Mom, I’m going for a short bike ride to link up with Heather.”
“Okay. You two don’t be too long, though. You know the big grill celebration is set for seven o’clock, right?”
“Mom, we’ll be here. Don’t worry.”
“Then have fun.”
With a quick heave, Jennifer lifted her bike off the ceiling hooks in the garage and set it down next to their experiment bench. She was just about to press the button to open the garage door when she glanced at the bench. Her heart froze.
The QT microchip was gone. Glancing up, she saw that Mark’s bike was also gone. She couldn’t believe it. Her idiot brother had taken the chip and gone to the Johnson house to implement that crazy scheme of his.
Jennifer opened the garage door, set her bike outside, and then returned to the button. With one more press, she darted back to the lowering door, stepped over the electric eye beam, mounted her bike, and pedaled off. She could only hope that Mark wouldn’t do something really stupid.
Chapter 82
“Kid, I don’t know what you are doing here, but this isn’t your lucky day.”
It was the same high school kid Priest had seen on the street when he was following Janet. The lad was tall for his age, about six feet, with a quintessential high school athletic body: muscular and wiry. Too bad for him. That athletic career was about to come to a very abrupt end.
Priest moved forward, and surprisingly the kid moved to meet him, gliding along in a rudimentary aikido style. Priest's smile grew wider. The kid thought he was trained. It was always nice when you didn’t have to chase them.