Hyper Lynx (The Lynx Series Book 6) by Fiona Quinn (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📗

universe worked, putting me in the right place for the right thing. I wasn’t thrilled about this. My parents were sending me a buzz. Pay attention!

Why was I here? What was I supposed to be remembering?

At seventeen, I thought I was bulletproof.

Since then, I have learned just how vulnerable a person can become.

Spyder knew what I was up to, and he allowed it. He let me act as if this was my op. Though I later learned that while I was working to bring justice for my dad, Spyder had his eyes on me the whole time, or someone did. He knew my every move. Always.

I never figured out how.

Spyder would never reveal his strategy.

When I found that out, though, I was annoyed that he hadn’t trusted me and the training he gave me to handle the situation myself.

Ah, the many things I would tell my teenaged self now that I knew better.

For example, I’ve learned the importance of having a team at your back, the buddy system. You don’t swim alone.

Back then, after I found out that Hanasal couldn’t be held responsible, I decided that a bad guy did bad guy things.

I had just needed to find something with enough oomph to force him home.

Prison would have been great, but off U.S. soil had been my second-best outcome:

Four days after my dad was buried, two days after I was given the news about Hanasal, I was justice bound.

It was Twenty-one thirty hours military time; I was in military mode. I had dressed in nondescript clothes and tucked my hair under a skullcap; the cap pulled low over my eyebrows. Most people started their identification process with the forehead and brow. So why feed people information? In my baggy clothes, I could be male; I could be female. I'd certainly blend into almost any background in these mousey colors that looked like pale winter dirt and cement.

So far, Hanasal seemed to have no clue that I was watching him.

I had to be careful; Spyder had taught me that I had to look at things around my target. The human brain feels the sensation of eyes on them, a limbic survival holdover from our earlier caveman times when those eyes might belong to a sabretooth tiger or some other predator. If a person felt the eyes, the target would scan to find the source, which would out you quicker than quick.

Once I had identified Hanasal, I shifted to focus on the things around him. I looked at his shoes, at his tires. I tried not to even think his name. I needed to guard my covert action.

Hanasal was driving a new car. Black. Shiny. He kept his diplomatic license plates.

Screw you.

He headed into the nearest low-rent neighborhood and pulled into a bar. The same bar where Hanasal was drinking the night of the crash.

Obviously, my dad’s death didn’t shake him loose from his drinking habit.

Pulling to the side of the lot, Hanasal parked face-in under a light, which told me he had no counter-surveillance training. And there he waited. My car didn’t fit in with the kinds of cars that parked in this lot. Mine was battered, rusty, and old. These cars were mainly middle class—except for Hanasal’s trophy of prestige and success.

I had parked on the street.

With my monocular, I watched Hanasal sitting there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He was waiting for someone.

I had slid from my car. Lightly shutting the door, I crossed the street, moved up the block, and circled around to stand in the shadows of a broad, winter-naked elm.

A car drove up beside Hanasal’s, and Hanasal’s window powered down. The motor buzzed against the backdrop of bar music. The passenger window on the new car slid open.

Hanasal reached out to receive something, amber, and white. It looked like a prescription bottle from the pharmacy.

Are you a druggie, too, Hanasal? I shot video of the exchange. Or whatever it was. I held perfectly still as the other car drove away.

Then Hanasal went into the bar.

Checking my watch, I had waited for twenty minutes, making sure Hanasal had settled inside. Until I could get hold of his key fob, getting under the car’s hood or to the fuse box was going to be a problem. Crouching low, I moved toward the back tire and hammered a piece of metal that I had brought for just this reason through the tread. Air hissed as it escaped. I waited to make sure the tire was fully deflated, then did the same on the front. I laid a few more pieces on that side of the car— See? Someone left some building materials, and he pulled right in on top of them. Surely two flat tires would stop him. But just to make sure, I monkey crawled up onto the thick limbs of the tree and made myself as comfortable as I could.

My plan had been to call the police if Hanasal tried to make his way out of the parking lot on his two good tires.

“That which is yours will not slip you by.” Hanasal was mine. I would not let him slip away.

That’s not what Spyder meant.

But screw Spyder.

No, I don’t mean that. I quickly sent out the erasure thought in case Spyder caught hold of my words in the ether. I’m just really angry, Spyder. Lava-in-the-veins angry, and I’m about ready to erupt. I had to slow down my rage. Slow down my blood flow and my respiration as I perched on the limb.

I found it most helpful to pretend to be a lizard in the sun when I was tasked by Spyder to do stakeout practice. Stakeouts meant long, long, long periods of nothingness. But if the mind wandered, if I fell asleep, if I lost my