The Milestone Protocol by Ernest Dempsey (reading in the dark txt) 📗

into a tight ponytail. Dark red lips creased slightly in a mocking grin, an expression that didn’t move a muscle on the rest of her alabaster face. The chilling hazel eyes that stared back at Valentin betrayed no remorse, no consideration of mercy.

“Going somewhere, Valentin?” the woman asked coldly. She turned the gun toward him, lining up the muzzle with his forehead.

He felt his bladder squeeze and clenched his jaw, assuming the last thing he was going to see was his dead girlfriend and a pistol in his face. He closed his eyes, resigned to his fate.

The gunshot didn’t come. Valentin opened his eyes and found the woman still standing there while two men—one white and one he pegged from somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula—stepped into the room with no regard to the billionaire.

They avoided the body on the floor and split up, one going to the bedroom, the other to a computer in the corner near a black entertainment center from IKEA. The white guy sat down at the computer and started pecking away at the keyboard, while the other rifled through Hana’s dresser drawers.

“I asked if you were going somewhere,” the woman reiterated.

As if doused with ice water, Valentin snapped his head and returned from his imagined death. “No. I wasn’t—”

“That’s a lot of suitcases for someone going nowhere, wouldn’t you say?” Her Czech was perfect, but her accent was off, as if she were from another country, somewhere nearby.

“Yes. I mean…no,” he stumbled through the answer. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I know the rules.”

The woman clicked her tongue and glanced back down the street in both directions. From his angle, Valentin caught a glimpse of an unmarked black police vehicle with lights flashing in the damp night.

He felt his stomach turn. Bile climbed toward his throat and he found it difficult to fend off. The realization pushed his will to the brink. They’d just killed Hana as though she were nothing more than a rodent, and the authorities had helped.

They were here.

“Don’t lie to me, Valentin.” She sounded like she enjoyed saying the name, the way she let the syllables roll off her tongue in derision.

“I’m not. I swear. Please, you must believe me. I was just helping her get her things for her trip.”

“Trip?” The woman cocked her head as if staring at a deranged puppy trying to eat its own tail.

“Yes. To my chalet in the mountains. She asked if she could go there for the upcoming weekend. Since my family won’t be there, I told her yes.”

“And you decided to come help her at two in the morning?” The woman stepped over the threshold, the gun gimbaled in the air, barely moving at all as she closed the door.

Valentin’s breath came in quick, desperate huffs, the air blowing out his nostrils. He felt the heat of it on his lips, and thirst abruptly gripped the back of his throat. He knew the reins of panic were lashing around him, something the woman would definitely detect—if she hadn’t already.

“I had a busy day. You know this.” He shrugged innocently. Valentin instantly knew the gesture was patronizing and dropped his hands. “Besides, she and I always keep strange hours. This is not new.”

The woman inclined her head, raising her chin as she stared at him over dark-lashed bottom eyelids.

“You knew you weren’t supposed to tell anyone, Valentin. Your father knew the rules. His father before him. And before him. You knew the rules, too, Valentin.” She took a menacing step toward him and stopped short of the body. The woman crudely raised her boot and rested it on Hana’s stomach.

The maneuver nearly brought the contents of Valentin’s stomach to his lips, but he winced and forced it back down for the second time. The callousness of this killer was unlike anything he’d ever seen.

The guy in the bedroom finished his work and returned to the living room. The woman pointed down at the body. “Phone,” she said.

The man replied with a curt nod and fished the phone out of a brown leather clutch looped over Hana’s shoulder.

He shifted over to the kitchen counter and held another phone next to the dead woman’s device. Within seconds, the screen unlocked. Then he tapped a button on his phone and the other screen went dark again.

“What did you do?” Svoboda demanded.

“Wiped her phone. If she texted anyone, or if it was tapped, any information has been permanently deleted.”

The woman’s answer chilled him. What kind of technology was this that allowed them to hack a person’s phone in seconds, wirelessly?

“How are we looking on the computer?” she asked, still glaring at Svoboda.

“Finishing up now. Doesn’t look like anything suspicious was sent. I don’t think she knew anything.”

“Good. Wipe the computer and head back to the car.”

The man tapped away at the keyboard. When he hit the Return key, the monitor blinked off. He stood, opened the door, and left, closing it behind him.

“So,” Svoboda said nervously, “where are we going? I thought we were supposed to wait for the coordinates before we make our way to the rendezvous.”

“Correct,” the woman said. “But you’re not coming with us.”

“What?”

A similar muffled pop echoed through the room. The right side of Svoboda’s head erupted, and the man collapsed to the floor, perpendicular to Hana. The guy who’d been standing at the kitchen counter lowered his weapon. Then the killer drew another pistol with the silencer still attached, placed it in Svoboda’s hand, and pulled the trigger. The pistol discharged, but no round ejected from the barrel. It was a blank, purely to expel powder residue onto Svoboda’s skin.

The gunman crouched down over the dead man, removed the decoy pistol, and pressed the real gun into Svoboda’s palm, careful to make sure the finger wrapped around the trigger and grip to leave fingerprints.

The woman watched the entire process with disconnected ease. She kept her eyes on the door, as if an intruder might enter. That was unlikely. Their team had cordoned off the street.