Page 71 of End of Days

She twisted her head away, ripping her hair out of his hands. He snatched her face and said, “Don’t fight this. It’s your chance at redemption.”

She slammed her head to the left, toward her kitchen counter, and saw her Amazon Echo Ten rotate on its base, looking for a face to recognize. It reached her and stopped.

Chapter 46

Outside the apartment complex, Aaron driving and Shoshana about to go nuts in the backseat, I said into my phone, “What’s Creed got? We need to go in.”

Jennifer said, “He’s working it. He’s got something called an Amazon Echo Ten. It’s a thing you use for Zoom calls. Lia apparently has it because of the pandemic and being forced to work from home.”

“How does that help us? We’re running out of time here, and the building is four stories.”

She came back a little curt, saying, “Well, if you’d wanted me to climb it, maybe I should be in the car, commando. You shouldn’t have left me here watching a computer.”

After I’d convinced George Wolffe to bring on Creed, we’d been at a little bit of a quandary. Brett and Knuckles were still dealing with the Rome authorities and absolutely no help. I was sure with Wolffe and Amanda Croft on the case they’d be released soon, but not in the time we needed. That left me with Jennifer, Shoshana, and Aaron. Since the entire assault was predicated on the inside information Creed could get us, that meant some Taskforce personnel had to stay behind to coordinate. And there was no way I was staying behind. That left Jennifer, and she was none too happy about it.

She wanted to get in the fight like no tomorrow, but I couldn’t order Aaron or Shoshana to coordinate with the Taskforce. So I’d ordered her to stay behind. In truth, Creed had a crush on her from previous operations, and would probably work harder with her on the other end of the VPN.

She knew that and hated me for putting her on desk duty. But then again, sometimes we all have to sacrifice for the greater good. Not every mission required a monkey. Sometimes it required a bikini model. Too bad she was both . . .

I said, “We’re about to exit the vehicle. Give me something.”

And like magic Jennifer said, “We’ve got the Echo. Passing control to you now.”

Creed had been able to access Lia’s phone, and like all normal humans in today's society, she had her phone automatically tether itself to the home Wi-Fi. Because he had the number, he was able to springboard off the phone into the network itself. He’d scanned it and found that Lia owned a device from Amazon called an Echo Ten. A basic screen for virtual talks, which had become a mainstay after the pandemic had hit in Italy, but it had a twist. It would find your face and follow it if you moved around, rotating on its base.

The entire concept was creepy to me, not the least of which was that the thing answered to voice commands, but the worst of it was it could also act as a surveillance camera if the owner wanted, rotating around the room to see what you wanted it to see. Meaning we now could see inside the house.

I pulled out my tablet, hit a Taskforce app, and was looking at the inside of the room. I saw a window in what appeared to be a kitchen. I gave a command to the device and it started rotating, searching for a face. It found one, and when it focused, I almost dropped the tablet.

A man was standing in front of Lia with his pants down around his knees, his hand in her hair. She was in a chair with her hands behind it, cinched tight, and she had some sort of thick necklace around her throat.

And she was scared out of her mind, the fear from her eyes penetrating my soul.

I slammed the tablet to the floor, pulled out a small explosivecharge from my backpack, press-checked my pistol, and said, “We go, right now. There’s only a single threat. Aaron, find the back of this place. Prevent a squirter. Shoshana, on me.”

Aaron said, “Wait, wait. Let’s make a plan here.”

I said, “No time. You guys can stay here if you want, but I’m going killing.”

Shoshana saw the ferocious violence exploding from me, looked at the footwell where the tablet lay, and saw the live picture on the screen. Something she was intimately familiar with when she’d been abused in the service of the Mossad. She hissed, a feral sound that penetrated the car.

Aaron leaned forward and saw the tablet himself. He looked at Shoshana and said, “No mercy,” then exited.

Shoshana and I both left the vehicle at a trot, jogging to the stairwell of the apartment, seeing a bunch of twenty-somethings all out having a good time. We pushed through them, and then reached a guard shack. We walked past it, and the guard came out, saying something in Italian.

I turned to him and he instinctively read the violence leaking out. I said, “I don’t speak Italian.”

In English, he said, “What do you want?”

I said, “I want you to get back in the fucking shack.”

He nodded and retreated. We began running up the stairs. We reached Lia’s landing and faced three guys sitting on the steps like cats in the sun, one of them smoking a vape.

I tried to go past them and the vape guy stood up, also saying something in Italian. I don’t know what he uttered, but it was really irrelevant, as I was sick of the roadblocks. I looked at the other two and said, “Shoshana, eliminate the threat.”

She said, “Gladly.”

The vape guy appeared confused, but that only lasted a moment, because the next thing he felt was pain. Shoshana ripped him off his feet, torquing his elbow until the joint shattered. He screamed and launched himself at Shoshana, his useless arm trailing him like a piece of toilet paper attached to his shoe. He tried to use his weight alone to subdue her, throwing himself on her body with his one good arm reaching for her neck. She grabbed the arm and rotated, using his momentum against him, flipping him off her back and tossing his ass off the stairwell to the ground below.

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