“You misunderstand.” Piotr approached Jill, his hands curled into fists and his voice raising an octave out of sheer adrenaline. “I was raised to put Mother Russia above all others. Above my friends, my family... even myself. The decision to undergo Project Fusion was not mine, yet I do not regret having done it.”
“But now you want a super buddy?”
“To be honest?” Piotr shrugged. “I do not know what I want. Right now, all I want is to get out from under the billionaire’s thumb.”
Jill arched a brow. “You mean Gregor?”
“He made promises.” Piotr’s fists tightened and his jaw clenched. “Promises he did not keep.”
“And you want my help to take him down?”
Not that Jill needed any extra motivation to bring an end to everything David Gregor stood for—her own survival was enough on its own. In fact, her decision to reveal her identity was all to prevent Gregor from doing so... at least this way, she could get out in front of everything and rid him of the satisfaction of bringing her down.
At least, that was what she told herself. The longer she was on the run, the worse the idea ultimately sounded. But it was too late to turn back.
“I could snap his neck without even breaking a sweat.”
“So could I,” Jill agreed.
Piotr’s frown deepened. “Then why don’t you?”
“Uh, did you miss the part where I used to be a homicide cop?” Jill shook her head. “I’m not like you. I wasn’t raised to be a killer.”
“You fought in war.”
“I cradled a semiautomatic in the middle of the fucking desert and got yelled at in three different languages from people our country had no quarrel with,” Jill countered. “I wouldn’t call that fighting.”
Piotr scowled. “So you will not kill.”
“Not intentionally,” Jill answered, thinking back on the memory of the assassin who had been sent after her a year ago... who had met her fate over the side of a building despite Jill’s efforts to save her. It weighed on her, though she never admitted it to anyone. Jill’s job had been to avenge the dead, not create more of them.
Piotr crouched in front of Jill, cocking his head to the side. His frown leveled off, but there was still something in his eyes Jill couldn’t place that left her on guard. “What would you have done to those cops? The ones who killed that boy?”
“I would’ve thrown their asses in jail and let them stand trial,” she answered in a surprisingly steady voice. “That’s what we do in this country.”
“Yes, I see how well that was working.” Piotr shook his head and stood up straight again, fishing a folded-up slip of paper from beneath his armor and tossing it at Jill’s feet. “Since I know you are going to follow me anyway... there is an address on that piece of paper. I will see you there.”
The time it took Jill to glance down at the slip of paper was all Piotr needed to vanish. By the time Jill glanced back up and noticed he was gone, her eyes danced around the relatively dark warehouse, finding nothing but dilapidated walls, abandoned crates, and several stains whose origins she could go the rest of her life without discovering.
But when she reached for the paper, unfolding it and finding the address in question, her blood ran cold... and not for the first time, Jill considered the fact that a trap had been laid out for her.
Yet she still intended to follow.
RAMON FROWNED WHEN he caught sight of the male vigilante emerging from the warehouse, placing the mask over his head and disappearing into the night. Adjusting the focus on his binoculars, Ramon held his breath as he watched the door from which the man had emerged. After what felt like an eternity, he saw Jill burst through the shadows, looking no worse off physically than when they had met at the bar. She clutched a piece of paper in her hand and glanced over her shoulder before sprinting off in the same direction the other vigilante had gone.
Dropping the binoculars into his lap, Ramon shook his head and scrubbed a hand over his face. He could feel the bags under his eyes, and the stubble on his chin was starting to itch. He would have to shave it off the following morning, no matter what Jorge thought.
“Dammit, Jill,” he muttered as he cranked the motor of his black, unmarked van. The rough idle would have to be checked out whenever he had a free moment... which wouldn’t be for another few weeks. He glanced over his shoulder before easing his foot against the throttle to merge back onto the street.
“Thought I told you to be careful...”
CHAPTER 13
MAKING SURE NOT TO tail Piotr too closely meant Jill took fifteen minutes longer than usual to get to the address in question. If this was the trap she was expecting, she wanted to formulate a game plan first. Unfortunately, nothing concrete came to mind—partly because her heart skipped a beat every time she heard a siren whine to life. As it turned out, trying not to get arrested took so much focus that almost all other thought fell by the wayside.
Once she found herself in front of the building in question, Jill paused, craning her neck to stare up at the top story. Forty floors up, the same spot from which she thought she had plummeted to her death just over a year ago. She had survived that fall, thanks in large part to the fact that her skeleton was indestructible, but the memory of her one-time mentor being the one to toss her out the window still sat heavy in the pit of her stomach.
For all Jill knew, a similar fate awaited her up there. She had no way of knowing what Piotr was planning—or what surprise he had waiting for her up there. She was likely entering a trap; in fact, chances were better this was a trap than not. Yet Jill couldn’t stop herself from slipping through a side entrance, using a security card she had pilfered in secret months ago. As evil lairs went, the penthouse atop Gregor Enterprises was entirely too accessible to her—not that she was about to complain. The sooner she could bring down David Gregor, the better.
Whether Piotr would be by her side when she did... well, Jill wasn’t sure whether that would be a good or bad thing.
THE MORE SHE READ, the more annoyed Lori Taylor became.
As David Gregor had promised, there was a file on her laptop outlining exactly what he had planned for Joel Freeman—and by extension, the vigilante—upon his return from France. The problem with that was, he wasn’t supposed to be back in the States for another week and a half. Lori damn sure didn’t want to spend that much time babysitting the disgraced military veteran. Especially when...
Why would she tolerate his presence for that long, if he was going to meet an unceremonious demise anyway? Why not just be rid of the asshole now and set everything in motion that way?
Looking at the plan objectively, Lori was impressed both with how detailed it was and how easily every part of it seemed to fit together. It was like getting that perfect piece on a game of Tetris, the one that would wipe out four rows of blocks in one swipe. The only problem was, that perfect piece wouldn’t drop any time soon.
The logic was sound. Freeman had answers about Project Fusion. If he had been left to rot in prison, there was a chance Jill Andersen could pay him a visit and use their prior relationship—and his betrayal—to extract answers.
Damning answers.
Before she met Piotr, Jill would have had no reason to revisit Project Fusion. But with the emergence of another cybernetically-enhanced individual, Jill would undoubtedly have questions. And Gregor did not want her getting those answers. Lori could admit that springing Freeman from prison and holding him hostage was a good way to keep him out of Jill’s crosshairs.
The fact that she was a vigilante potentially complicated matters, but as far as Lori was concerned, that made her less likely to track down her former commanding officer. With any luck, she was so busy avoiding the cops that nothing else popped up on her radar.
Still, if Freeman was going to be the world’s surliest bait, Lori had much better things in mind for him.
And best of all, her idea still accomplished Gregor’s endgame. That was why her eyes fluttered f
rom the laptop to the desk drawer to her right, her lips curling into a devilish smile.
Gregor would be so happy with her when he returned home.
JOEL FREEMAN HAD TEETERED in and out of consciousness for most of the day, the cocktail of whatever drugs had been given to him upon his surprising release from prison doing a number on his system. His head lolled to the side, his hands tied behind his back and his ankles bound to the legs of an uncomfortable wooden chair. His t-shirt was soaked in sweat, and when Freeman was awake, his breath was short. In truth, he preferred prison to wherever he was now.
At least behind bars, they actually fed him.
The sound of the door to his room slamming against the wall broke Freeman out of his stupor, and he sneered when he saw a woman with short black hair approaching. She had made her contempt for him clear as day whenever he saw her, even though Freeman had no idea who she was. Aside from the fact that she had picked him up from prison, clearly at the behest of someone else, Freeman knew nothing about this woman—other than right now, she stood in front of him with a scowl on her face and a nine millimeter cradled in a glove-clad hand.
His surroundings were surprisingly familiar, though. If his guess was correct, and this woman was in league with who he thought she was, then prison was definitely the more attractive option.
In prison, everyone had left Freeman alone. No one had raised even a fist toward him, let alone a weapon. His military service had meant something, even behind bars.
Here? Not so much.
“You know,” he muttered in a raspy voice, pausing only to cough the dryness out of his throat, “I’ve fantasized many a time about wakin’ up to a pretty face. Not once was she pointin’ a gun at me.”
“First time for everything,” the woman growled.
“Who are you?” Freeman asked, blinking the fogginess out of his eyes. “Someone hates me enough to point a gun at my head, I deserve to know who they are.”
“No. You really don’t.”
The woman pulled the trigger before Freeman could say anything, and his head whipped back when the bullet tore its way through his skull. Bone chips and chunks of brain matter fell to the floor as a small trickle of blood oozed from his forehead and down the side of his nose.
Freeman never even had a chance to scream, and he was long dead by the time the woman tossed the gun at his feet and padded out of the room.
AS SOON AS JILL SLIPPED into David Gregor’s penthouse, the faint smell of gunpowder caught her attention. Crouching at the doorway, and wishing she had her trusty katana on her back, Jill studied her dark surroundings. Content that she was alone, but fully expecting Piotr to make an appearance at any moment, she crept in the direction of the smell. It only grew stronger as she approached a door, and the closer she got, the more Jill noticed another smell mixing with that of a recently-fired gun.
This stench was unmistakable, and it was one she had become intimately familiar with over the years. She was so used to it, in fact, that it didn’t affect her anymore. But as Jill wrapped her fingers around the doorknob, she found herself holding her breath. Whatever awaited her in this room, it had happened recently.
This was definitely a trap. But Jill couldn’t turn back now.
The first thing Jill saw when she stepped into the room was the brain matter and the blood on the carpet. The dead man tied to the chair was almost unrecognizable at first, but as Jill crouched to a knee and took a closer look at the victim’s face, her heart skipped a beat and her stomach lurched.
No...
Covering her mouth, Jill got back to her feet and staggered backward. Her mind reeled; the last time she had seen Joel Freeman, he was securely behind bars. Her commanding officer in the Army, and the man who had once thrown her out of this very suite, disgraced and serving time on conspiracy charges.
He should have died in prison an old man. Instead, he was tied to a chair in David Gregor’s high-rise penthouse with a bullet having blown through the back of his head. Jill caught sight of the gun at his feet, a cop’s instinct taking over as she dropped to her knees and picked up the weapon.
Which was when she heard a telltale click from behind.
CHAPTER 14
“DROP THE WEAPON!”
Even as he gave the command, and cradled his Sig Sauer in both hands, Ramon couldn’t believe his eyes. The dead body was nothing new for him—he had actually seen far more gruesome scenes in his three-plus years working Homicide. But for his former partner to be standing over the body, a handgun in her grasp... that was something Ramon couldn’t wrap his head around.
This had to be a bad dream. No, worse than that. If Ramon had been asked to conjure up the absolute worst nightmare he could think of, short of finding loved ones massacred, seeing Jill standing over a dead body with a recently-fired weapon in her hand would probably be near the top of the list.
Jill dropped the weapon and placed her hands on the back of her head, slowly turning around. Bile tickled the back of her throat, but a deep breath helped her maintain her composure. Barely.
“Ramon...”
“Stay right there,” he ordered, holding the gun in one hand as his other fished for his work-issued phone. Both hands shook, but Ramon never took his eyes off Jill as he finally managed to get through to Dispatch. “This is Detective Gutierrez, badge number 35277. I have a homicide at Gregor Enterprises. Pursuing suspect, requesting backup.”
The words sent another chill down Jill’s spine, and even though every instinct told her to make a run for it, her feet stayed planted to the floor. She wouldn’t do that to her former partner, and really... where she was going to go? She was forty stories up in a relatively fortified suite. There were but only so many options at this point. Her best hope was, ironically enough, the man pointing a gun at her. Even if his voice was so detached that it was as if he was treating her like a common thug.
“Ramon,” she repeated once the detective pocketed his phone. “Come on, you know I didn’t kill Freeman.”
Ramon’s frown deepened. Freeman? The Army creep who betrayed Jill? What was... he stared at the body for the first time, truly taking in the appearance and sure enough, the dead man clinging to the chair was none other than Joel Freeman. Ramon swallowed the burning lump that had formed in his throat, tightening his grip on his weapon. The puzzle pieces were fitting together, and he didn’t care for the picture they showed.
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked. “And where’s the other vigilante?”
Jill frowned, because how could Ramon know about...
“You’re tailing me.”
“Turns out I have good reason to.” Ramon took a step forward, both hands on his weapon again. “The other vigilante, Jill. Where is he?”
“Hey.” Jill lowered her arms and turned around to approach Ramon, certain he wouldn’t respond by pulling the trigger—not just because of the hassle awaiting cops who discharge their weapons, but also because she bet some part of him still cared about her. She turned out to be right, but Jill didn’t like the way that gun was trembling in his grasp. “You know me. You know this isn’t something I would do.”
“Then you better have a hell of an explanation.”
“Why?” Jill got in Ramon’s face, narrowing her gaze and letting her infrared eye flicker. “You gonna bring me in?”
“If I don’t, someone else from the department will.” Ramon shook his head and actually grinned a little. “Believe it or not, I’m your best option at this point.”
Reaching out and placing a hand on Ramon’s shoulder, Jill pulled him in for a quick hug and planted a soft kiss to his cheek. Her other hand rested on his wrist, lowering it until the gun was no longer pointed at her.
She felt bad for what she was about to do. Really, she did.
But what other choice did she have?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered in Ramon’s ear before turning on the balls of her feet and sprinting toward the window on the other side of the room. The seconds in took R
amon to realize what she was doing, combined with the commotion over his radio of backup trying to climb forty stories as quickly as possible, was all Jill needed to burst through the window and to freedom.
She heard gunfire from behind and reached under her overcoat for a grappling gun she had found at the BPD’s impound lot a week and a half ago. As she began her freefall, Jill pulled the trigger and grinned when the line went tight and the tug sent her momentum off to the side. There would be no freefall this time; instead, Jill merely had to make sure she didn’t slam into any of the buildings on her way to safety.
The gunshots grew quieter as Jill swung to safety, unable to shake the image of Freeman with his brains blown out from her mind. Was that Piotr’s doing? And if it was, why would he resort to using a gun? To frame Jill? If that was the case, it was a poor job... unless one discounted the fact that the police had found her near the body with the gun in her hand.
Yeah, in hindsight, that was dumb.
“SHIT!” GREG SORENSON slammed his hand against the side of his weapon once it was clear the vigilante had bolted to safety—through a fortieth-story window, no less. He turned toward Ramon with a shake of his head, lifting the visor from his tactical helmet and ignoring his partner, who was still glancing through what was left of the window.
“What now, Detective?”
Ramon holstered his gun with a shake of his head, stealing a glance back at the body—as if it would have gone anywhere in the commotion—before turning his attention back to Sorenson. Truth was, he didn’t know what to do. This was his worst nightmare come true, and Ramon was now kicking himself for not having a plan in place for such a possibility. But his former partner, the person he once considered his best friend, was a fugitive and a murder suspect.
If ever Ramon wished he worked in Narcotics instead...
“Call Stevens,” he muttered. “Have him bring a CSU crew to handle the body. This is an active homicide.”
Behind the Mask Page 7
