“He’s here,” Will said, coming in. “Tell Luna what you found.”
“Okay,” said Pike. “On the surface, this just looks like a bunch of normal data, but the file sizes are huge. So we ran a decryption program, and we got hundreds and hundreds of emails, financial documents, bank account numbers, the works, all hidden as secondary pages in these spreadsheet files.”
“Meaning what?” I said.
“The financial transactions go back and forth between Nocturne City and the Belikovs,” said Will. “Someone here was backing them, in the trafficking ring and in something else, something to do with bioterrorism.”
“Not quite,” I said. “More like designer assassins to do whatever dirty work you could think of.”
“Really?” Will scratched his chin. “I … heard of some crazy shit in Russia during the sixties, but … wow. They actually made one of those old programs viable?”
“Unfortunately,” I said.
“And we found this email,” said Jensen. “When we connected to the server. It was sent from a Web service about twenty hours ago.”
“As near as our translator can tell,” Will said, reading from a notepad, “it says something along the lines of:
‘Project compromised. Family ties must be eliminated. Put him on the road.’ Along with latitude and longitude that lead here, to Nocturne City.”
“Oh, gods,” I said. “There must be a third one.”
“Third what?” Will asked.
“Would you believe a genetically altered were programmed to be a mob hitman?”
Will rubbed his forehead. “With you, sweetheart, I’ve learned that anything is possible.”
“The Belikovs are cleaning house,” I said. “I got away, and they’re trying to eliminate their backers in the U.S. to keep us from prosecuting them.”
Will pointed a finger at Pike. “Find out who’s the signatory on the account the payouts originated from,” he said.
“Someone named Felix Natchez is the account’s owner,” said Pike after a moment.
“We may already be too late,” Will said. “The assassin’s been on the road for almost a day. This Natchez have any priors?”
“He wouldn’t,” I said softly, feeling like I had just stepped into an express elevator, headed straight down.
“He’s a cop.”
A crooked cop. A cop who had known Lily Dubois…”Nathaniel Dubois,” I said. Will frowned at me.
“Are you sure?”
“He’s in bed with Natchez,” I said. “It was Nate Dubois who tried to throw me off his daughter’s murder investigation in the first place, with his were thugs. He wanted pack justice, not police work.”
“If you’re wrong, someone else is going to get murdered,” Jensen said.
“A lying, sex-trafficking scumbag,” I said. “And anyway, I’m not wrong.”
“Call the SCS task force on the local PD for backup,” Will said to Jensen. “I’m heading to the Dubois residence.”
“Me, too,” I said. Will started to object, but I held up my hand. “I’m not letting you go up there alone. If this creature is anything like the one I met in Kazakhstan, your, uh, condition is not going to be a huge benefit. You might be alive, but you’ll be in ribbons.”
“You sure you’re up to it?” Will said, his brow furrowing. Jensen and Pike looked between us, no doubt wondering what condition Agent Fagin suffered from.
“I’m sure,” I said. “I have to be up to it. I’m the only one who has a chance of stopping him.”
“All right,” Will said, pulling his holdout pistol from his ankle holster. “Then take this. Can’t have you running in there unarmed.”
I gave him a small smile. “My hero.”
“I try my best,” Will said, running for the elevator. Icaught up with him at the door.
I prayed that we weren’t too late.
And I wondered where on earth I’d find the time to have a wedding.
The Duboises lived just outside of the fashionable part of Cedar Hill, on the back slope that wasn’t really Cedar Hill but the part of Garden Hill that wasn’t wall-to-wall crackheads, in a refurbished, rambling Craftsman that was still far beyond what I could afford.
Will pulled the Mustang to a crooked stop at the curb and jumped out, eyeing the house. “Doesn’t look like a hotbed of mob activity from here.”
I pulled my borrowed gun from the waist of my jeans and held it at my side. “I think that’s the point.”
Will and I mounted the wide porch steps, lined with planter boxes displaying the first flowers of spring, bright reds and pinks, fleshy colors. Bloody colors.
“Mr. Dubois?” Will called, tapping on the door. I was in the second position, my shoulder against the frame, the gun tight in my fist, ready to spring into action should Dubois be waiting on the other side of the door with a shotgun.
There was no answer, and I reached my fist across the fire zone to knock. “Nathaniel, it’s Luna Wilder. Can you open the door?”
This time, my ears caught something, far away in another part of the house. A shattering of glass, a faint, strangled scream.
“Will,” I said tightly. “He’s already here.”
Will stepped back, switching positions with me, and pulled his radio off his belt. “Nocturne dispatch, be advised we’ve detected a disturbance at the Dubois residence and are making entry.”
The dispatcher’s voice crackled. “Ten-four, Agent Fagin. SCS backup en route. ETA five minutes.”
“We don’t have five minutes,” I said, feeling the sick creep of helplessness in my gut again. I’d been at the mercy of Grigorii Belikov for the past several weeks. No more.
Will gestured to the front door. “Be my guest, doll.”
I took a firm stance and planted my right foot against the Duboises’ deadbolt. The doorframe splintered and it swung inward, hitting the wall with a crack like a rifle shot. That’s the bitch about a hard entry—italways lets the bad guys know you’re coming.
The sounds were much louder now, snarls and cries, crashes as a body was tossed from place to place. I touched Will’s shoulder. “Upstairs.”
“Let me lead,” he said. “Just in case they get cute and shoot me.”
Will was never macho or alpha about these things—he just stated facts. If he ran into gunfire, he’d get back up. If he was taken down by an enraged
