Page 25 of Hidden Justice
I’m moving with training and power and instinct, faster and more deadly than a cobra. Adjusting the sharp metal in my palm, I step forward and slam it up and through Aamir’s ribs. It slides in like butter. He jerks taller, as if he just woke the fuck up. Piss runs down his legs.
Not enough. Not nearly enough. I smash the pod into his mouth, and even though he spits it out, I know it doesn’t matter. That much concentrated poison causes an instant reaction. Foam spills from his lips. He lurches backward, tumbling on his heels, flailing backward until he falls.
Screaming, the girl jumps out of the way.
Aamir’s head slams with a thick soddenclapagainst the marble tile at bathroom’s edge.
One second, maybe two, before I have my gloves rolled off and am turning to the presence I sense charging at my back.
I snap a well-placed roundhouse against Dmitri’s neck. He staggers right.
A silenced round misses me.
Before he gets off another shot, I punt his balls back to his ancestors.
Face red, he tucks tail and drops to his knees.
I grab his gun, thankful for the silencer, and smash it against his skull, hard enough to crack sanity. Of which he obviously has none. His eyes roll back and his body gives out.
The girl screams.
Fuck.
I remove my prosthetic tongue with a jerk that rips at my gums, sending warm, metallic blood flooding into my mouth. In Arabic, I beg the kid to stop screaming.
No go.
All bony knees, elbows, and long, blonde hair slick against a skeletal back, she runs screaming into the main living area. I follow, gun raised.
The suite door opens, and Nameless strolls casually inside. Little girls screaming? Just another day at the office.
He registers me with my gun in hand, chasing the girl, and he reaches for his weapon.
Too late. I shoot him in the head.Crack. He drops like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
A split-second later, the phone in the dead guard’s pocket begins to play Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba.”
That’s inappropriate enough to halt me in my tracks before I race into Walid’s room, breathing hard. I spot the girl and approach slowly with my hands raised. My Arabic sucks, so simple works best. “Women are fighting back. I am here to rescue you. I need you to get dressed. Fast.”
The girl’s attitude changes instantly. Her blue eyes fill with tears. “I’m Amal,” she says, surprising me by speaking English. “I’m the one who prayed for you to come.
As I rush Amal back to the other room and get her clothes, my throat grows so tight with grief, I can’t speak. She prayed for me to come? I want more than anything to answer her prayers. I have to get us out of here.
When she’s dressed, I take her hand in mine. She’s shaking so hard it feels like she’s tugging my arm. I squeeze her hand tightly, trying to reassure her, and we move as one out of the room, past the dead men, and down the hallway.
Amal is as determined as she is scared, and that makes two of us. But her quick response and obvious comprehension of my plan tells me all I need to know. Childhood is something only unused children get to enjoy.
At the end of the corridor, the elevator opens and two hotel security guards step out. They have weapons drawn. They look at us and then toward the room we came from.
As planned, Amal begins to cry. In Arabic she shouts, “The men are all dead! All dead!” As she sobs, I bend to comfort her.
“Wait here,” one of the guards instructs us as they move together down the hall. I hunch closer to Amal, trying to appear weak, small, a nonthreat. The elevator dings. My mouth goes dry. My heart preps for takeoff.
The elevator doors open. Still tucked over Amal, I angle my head to see the men from the corner of my eye.
Oh, shit. Walid followed by two guards gets out of the elevator. They spot hotel security and begin to follow them down the hall.
For whatever reason, they don’t register me or Amal. Or, if they do, some part of their primitive brain tells them we’re harmless—the opposite lesson Amal has learned.