Page 20 of Agent Zero
He came back to himself with his forehead resting against the steering wheel, an ache building in the very center of his skull.How long did he have, if whatever they’d dosed him with was killing the happy little buggers in his bloodstream?
Doesn’t matter.He tucked the files into his backpack.Black, heavy-duty and modified ever so slightly, it was now his lifeline.So long as he retained possession, he could be sure of not losing one of the few edges he had left.
Vanishing as soon as he left the SUV and the parking lot was his safest bet.Deep cover and far away, keeping his head low, and finding a corner of the globe they didn’t care about was the smart thing to do.He had wheels elsewhere, and there was probably a transponder in this piece of government-issued metal.
Reese jammed the key into ignition, twisted it hard.He needed a few minutes to get the capsule out of his hip—passive beacon or not, they would soon begin scrambling serious resources to find him.The faster he could find some place to ditch the tracker, disinfect the incision he’d have to make, and move on, the better.
Damn.What am I going to do?
As if he didn’t know.
Looked like he was going to make his coffee date after all.The only problem was, someone else might have met the lady first.
THIRTEEN
A cloud driftedover the sun, and Holly hunched her shoulders, hurrying along the building side of the pavement.The bus had been limping along twenty minutes late, for God’s sake, and maybe he’d think she’d changed her mind.
Maybe sheshouldchange her mind.It was her day off and she had better things to do.There were the dishes, for one thing, laundry to haul up the block, and figuring out next month’s food budget.Although working at the Crossroads meant she’d never go hungry there was only so much greasy spoon you could take, and if it was one of the days she couldn’t eat, she preferred to dry-heave at home.
Of course, she had plans to step neatly out of her own life like a woman taking off her slippers as she got into bed, but all the planning in the world didn’t mean anything would go smoothly.Life had taught her that much, at least.
Why was she so nervous?It was just coffee.It made sense that he was a bit shy...but still, there were things that bothered her.She couldn’t think of them just now, but she was sure there existed.
Maybe it was just that she couldn’t let anything good through the door after Phillip.
God, are you even thinking abouthimnow?You’re divorced.Let it go.
What was the word for feeling sad even when someone who was nothing but a user hustled their way out of your life?Did a precise term exist?Maybe she was nervous because Reese might be...well, decent, and she wasn’t going to be around long enough to?—
A horn blared to her left but she didn’t glance back, shaking her head to get all the second-guessing out instead.I shouldn’t have agreed to this.I should turn around and go home.
If she had looked, she would have seen the black van in the right-hand lane, slowing down as it reached the end of a line of parked cars.In half a block Montrose Street narrowed, the parking lane whittled away to nothing.It was the same black van that had been circling her route to the Starbucks on Montrose and Fifteenth, but then again, vans were as common as colds, in the city.
Even black ones.
Should have picked a place closer to home.Should actuallygohome.This is crazy.Holly sighed, jamming her hands deeper in the pockets of her gray hoodie.Picking a place closer to her building wasn’t a good idea, though, if you were a woman alone in the big city.She could turn around right now; it was only a short bus ride to?—
Someone bumped into her, hard, from behind.Holly glanced up, the curse on her lips dying as she realized the midday crowd wasn’t bad enough to warrant that sort of thing, and that it wasn’t a simply an inattentive collision bump.More like someone was pushing her, and?—
“What the fu—” she began, but he’d already shoved her across the sidewalk.A black van had pulled to the curb, its paint job neither glossy nor dusty, and she was bundled inside like a bag of laundry.
She couldn’t even scream.A gloved hand clapped over her mouth, her hands yanked back and a slight zipping sound—something bit her wrists, cruelly—and by the time Holly realized she was being kidnapped she had already been jabbed with a needle the size of the DeriCorp skyscraper downtown.Right through her jeans, too, and it stung like hell.Her right buttcheek promptly went numb, but she found her wits and began to kick.
She was still trying to yell when the chemical took effect, and everything went black.
* * *
Groggy, blinking, the world smears of wet color on a glass plate.It felt like only a few seconds, but now she was now sitting up, at least relatively.That was, if “sitting up” meant “slumped on something hard and uncomfortable,” and her mouth was cotton dry, too.
What just...I was walking down the street, and then...
Her head was stuffed with dry crackling, and all she could do was listen.
She heard her own voice, slurred and slow as a sleepwalker’s.Questions being asked.It was very important that she concentrate, in fact it was critical, because if she didn’t concentrate bad things would happen.
Sudden light searing her eyes.She whimpered, and remembered her name.
Holly.I’m Holly.
