Chương 6 - Shadows on Park Avenue
"Down!"
Khalid didn't hesitate. He lunged across the table, his arms wrapping around my shoulders as he slammed me toward the slate floor.
The reinforced glass window did not shatter—it blew inward in a spray of razor-sharp diamond pellets as a high-caliber round tore through the frame. The heavy oak display case behind us exploded into splinters, ancient clay urns disintegrating into red dust.
Sirens wailed in the distance, swallowed instantly by the shrieking wind that poured through the ruined window seventy stories above the pavement.
"Lev!" Khalid roared into the darkness, dragging me behind the heavy granite island of the kitchen as a second round punched through the drywall above our heads.
"Sniper on the terrace of the Sony building!" Lev’s voice bellowed from the hallway. "Thermal scopes! They're using sub-sonic rounds—they've already bypassed building security downstairs!"
The lights in the penthouse died, plunging the vast room into pitch blackness broken only by the sweeping emergency strobes from the streets below.
I was pinned beneath Khalid’s chest, my cheek pressed against the cold slate floor. His hand was clamped over the back of my neck, his body acting as a shield between me and the open terrace. Even amidst the chaos, the sharp scent of his cologne and the steady, rapid hammering of his heartbeat were overwhelming.
"Can you crawl?" he whispered against my ear, his breath warm against my hair.
"Where's the stone?" I choked out, coughing through the plaster dust. "The obsidian disc—"
"I have it," he said, pulling the heavy velvet-wrapped disc from inside his jacket with his free hand. "Keep your head down."
A barrage of automatic gunfire tore through the penthouse doors.
Three figures in dark tactical gear, carrying suppressed carbines with green night-vision optics, swept into the foyer. They moved with military efficiency, clearing the corners with practiced lethality.
"Check the bedroom!" one barked in Russian. "Take the girl alive! The brother wants her vocal cords intact!"
My stomach plummeted.
Khalid shifted his weight, his fingers sliding down to my wrist. "On my count, Hannah. Run for the service stairwell behind the pantry. Do not look back."
"What about you?"
"I am the one they're being paid to kill," he said, pulling a compact, matte-black pistol from a concealed holster beneath his waistband. "That makes me an excellent distraction."
"One," he whispered.
"Two."
"Three!"
Khalid rose on one knee, extending his pistol around the corner of the granite island, and fired three double-taps in rapid, deafening succession.
The muzzle flashes lit up the dark penthouse like strobes. One of the tactical operators dropped instantly, his carbine clattering across the slate floor. The other two scrambled for cover behind the overturned dining table, their suppressed weapons spitting a hail of lead into the kitchen cabinets above us.
"Move!" Khalid ordered, shoving me toward the narrow pantry door.
I scrambled on hands and knees across the glass-strewn floor, my combat boots finding traction against the debris. I kicked open the pantry door, revealing the narrow metal fire escape stairs that wound down through the core of the skyscraper.
Behind me, the sound of combat was vicious and brief—the sickening crack of bone, the hollow thud of a body hitting stone, and the low, furious curse of a dying man.
I didn't reach the bottom of the stairs. Khalid burst through the fire door three seconds behind me, his knuckles bloody, a long red gouge running along his temple where a piece of flying slate had clipped him. Lev was right behind him, carrying a heavy duffel bag and a smoking assault rifle.
"The parking garage is compromised," Lev said, his breathing barely elevated despite the descent. "Tariq’s spotters are watching the street exits."
"We don't use the street," Khalid said, wiping the blood from his brow with the back of his hand. He looked down at me, his eyes blazing with an electric, untamed fire that took my breath away. "Hannah, how do you feel about heights?"
"I hate heights," I said immediately.
May you like
"Unfortunate," Khalid murmured, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the maintenance access door on the sixty-eighth floor. "Because the only way out of this building without an autopsy is across the maintenance crane to the Bloomberg tower."
***
