Night Shadow by Cherry Adair Read Free Book Online

fucking impressed. So far
    they’ve killed upward of eleven thousand people on five continents. Lu,
    work with him on that analysis. Send everything back to HQ for further
    breakdown.”
    They watched the footage frame by frame, checking each image. Kiersted
    summoned sandwiches and coffee as they worked and the sky outside
    lightened as one or another of them rose to stretch or hit the head.
    “Alex, look at frame seventeen three, ninety-two.” Lexi leaned forward.
    “Run in sequence.”
    Alex went ahead a hundred frames as Lexi had done, then watched the
    footage in real time. “Wel , I’l be damned. They’re all left-handed.”
    “That, too. Watch the guy on the far left.”
    The tango, dressed in the same head-to-toe black as all the others,
    shimmered from his position against a pillar and reappeared in the middle
    of the confused, frightened crowd. He was there for less than two seconds
    before he shattered into the now familiar black swirling dust.
    “Freeze,” Lexi instructed the program. She leaned over to point to Alex’s
    monitor. The people milling around the guy in black seemed oblivious to
    his presence. “Him, him, her, her and him, are the first ones on the floor a
    few minutes later. He was the biological delivery.”
    Alex studied the movement then replayed the frames. “Good work. Let’s
    see if any more of his buddies had the same directive.”
    For the next fifteen minutes, they all watched the action in real time. A
    dozen tangos did the same shatter-and-dissipate. Seconds later, the
    people closest to them exhibited signs of a rapid biological attack.
    “Interesting.”
    Lexi glanced over at him. “Wizards?”
    24
    Night Shadow
    “No,” Lu said flatly. “There was no Trace indicating they were wizards or
    even Halfs.”
    Scowling in concentration, Ginsberg peered at his monitor. “If not wizards,
    who or what else could shimmer like that?”
    Lexi glanced around the table. “If it looks like a wizard, and acts like a
    wizard, it must be a wizard.”
    “Yes and no,” Alex shot back. “Not everything is how it appears.”
    “That’s illogical.” Lexi swiveled her head to look at him.
    “Yeah,” Alex said, his eyes fixed and glittering as he stared at the monitor.
    “I know. That’s the problem. They might have the behaviors and traits of
    a wizard, but they don’t have a wizard signature.”
    “Don’t know who or what these guys are,” Daklin muttered, his fingers
    flying over the infrared holographic keyboard, “but you can bet we’l find
    out.”
    Lexi’s heart clutched. “But how many people wil they kil before we do
    that?” She knew that somehow, some way, T-FLAC would ID and
    annihilate these young tangos. But it felt as though a ginormous clock
    ticked over the team’s heads as they tried to figure it out in time.
    A clock that told you you had six hours, when really you only had one,
    perhaps not even that.
    Four

Novos
    Começos
    Medi-Spa
    Rio
    de
    Janeiro
    22
    55
    43
    12
    09
    03

08
Cabin twenty-three
    A bead of perspiration trickled down her temple. Alex wanted to lick it off.
    Lexi, being Lexi, ignored it. Alex, being Alex, became fixated by the idea
    of licking his partner all over. Wanting to taste a fellow operative was a
    first for him.
    He was stretched out on the wide, soft bed, arms folded beneath his head,
    bare feet crossed on the pristine white spread. Lexi paced. She was going
    to wear a damn groove in the floor.
    Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him. Her lips tightened as if she could
    read his mind. Good thing she couldn’t.
    “The manual clearly states in chapter three on Logistics, section H on
    Travel, subsection ii on Alternative Transportation: Operatives that are
    able to teleport may do so no more than three times within a twenty-four
    hour period— ”
    She emphasized the time constraints.
    “Excessive teleportation can lead to operative impairment and
    malfunction, possibly rendering the operative unfit for duty at the