Rogue Faction Part 2: A Cyrus Cooper Thriller: Book Three

by Xander Weaver

  Cyrus rode the elevator with Dargo to the first floor. There, Cyrus exited without a word, offering Dargo only a silent nod of thanks for his support. Dargo would take the elevator up to five. There, he would check in with the evening security detail before turning in for the night, or doing whatever it was that Dargo did in his down time. Cyrus knew Dargo planned to leave first thing in the morning to pay Gerard Combs, one-time head of Onyx Gander, an impromptu visit. Even hours before he was due to leave, Cyrus could read the grim determination in Dargo’s normally stalwart eyes. He was glad he wouldn’t be standing in Combs’s shoes come tomorrow afternoon.

  Stepping into the common area of the first floor, Cyrus was surprised to see Anna sitting by herself on the sofa. Only one lamp was on, adding to the muted ambient moon and city light spilling through the building’s massive glass facade. But what struck him as most unusual was that she sat alone, without a book or a magazine; not even a television ran to entertain her. She simply sat and stared blankly at nothing with her legs folded beneath her and her hands in her lap.

  “Anna?” Cyrus said quietly. “Are you alright?”

  His voice seemed to jolt her from a trance in a way that the elevator chime apparently had not. He saw her eyes snap into focus as soon as her head turned toward him.

  “My God,” she muttered as she launched herself from the sofa. “You’re alright!”

  “Of course I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be?” Even as the words left his lips, he knew something wasn’t right. Only Dargo knew of his meeting with Boone. He hadn’t told Natasha, and he certainly hadn’t told Anna. “What’s going on?” He could already see confusion on Anna’s face that mirrored his own.

  “Tash got a call from the hospital,” she explained. “They said you’d been in an accident—that you were hurt. What happened?”

  “I don’t know—I’m fine. There was no accident. Please, explain?”

  Anna looked around the quiet, empty room as if ensuring they were alone. When she spoke once more, her voice was hushed, as if afraid someone might overhear. “The man who called, he said you were hurt and that you needed to see her. He said she had to come right away, but that she shouldn’t tell anyone.”

  Cyrus’s heart sank with the realization that Natasha was no longer in the building. “Wait a minute,” Cyrus said, nearly cutting her off. “Why would she do that? She didn’t go by herself, did she?”

  Anna nodded. “The man said he was calling about Jon Webb—she said that no one on the island knows you by that name. She left as soon as she hung up the phone.”

  “But security wouldn’t just let her—”

  “She used the tunnel!”

  Cyrus’s mind flashed back to the moment at the bar when he saw Boone pocketing his phone as he returned from the bar’s restroom. He felt a white-hot flash of anger. But it didn’t make sense. At that point, Boone would’ve been certain that his sniper had him dead to rights. Why would he—?

  There was a very physical pain, as if he’d been punched in the gut. Of course. Boone was moving on with his plan. If the sniper was able to remove him from the equation, Boone would need to act fast in order to get his hands on Natasha before she received word of his death. He’d used his inside knowledge of their prior relationship and Cyrus’s former alter ego to draw her out. Once Boone had his hands on Natasha, he’d have what he needed to leverage Shadowlight and Voss into the hands of the Coalition.

  No, Cyrus reminded himself, given what he’d learned upon accessing the Red Queen’s files, Shadowlight wasn’t destined for the hands of the Coalition. It was a part of whatever personal plans Monica and Boone had set up.

  The hospital.

  She would never make it that far. Boone would send her there, then intercept her along the way. After that, they could have gone anywhere.

  “How long ago did she leave?”

  Anna looked at her watch and took a moment to judge the interval. “It’s been at least a half hour, maybe more. I’ve been waiting for her to call with news.”

  It was already too late.

  “What’s going on?” Anna demanded. Her eyes were red, rimmed with tears threatening to fall at any moment.

  His mind running wild, Cyrus began processing one plan after another, discarding each as quickly as the idea formed. Boone’s sniper hadn’t gotten him outside the bar, which would present an obstacle for Boone. He would need to adjust his plans to compensate. But as long as he had Natasha, Boone knew he’d effectively immobilized Cyrus, as well as Voss—even Dargo, for that matter. None of them could move against him so long as he held one of Voss’s girls.

  It meant that maintaining control of Natasha would be Boone’s top priority. That would mean getting off the island as soon as possible—unless he had something else in mind. And God only knew what that might be. Boone had always excelled at thinking outside the box.

  “Did she take her mobile with her?” Cyrus asked.

  Anna nodded. “Of course. She was going to call as soon as she knew what had happened to you.”

  Darting back to the elevator, Cyrus tapped the ‘up’ button to call for the car. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s time to see how well you know your sister!”

  Chapter 34

  Millennium Beach,

  2:04 am

  The waves were crashing far off to the right as Cyrus made his way along the perimeter of the jagged volcanic rocks. They marked the extent of the freezing, finely-grained sand that constituted Kapros’s second longest uninterrupted stretch of beach. He hugged the natural wall of stone on his left, sticking to the murky shadows cast by the half moon. With few clouds in the sky, light wasn’t a problem. If anything it was a hindrance. Darker conditions would’ve simplified his approach.

  Cyrus looked up at the wide, two-story structure above him. It was built on a pier that extended almost fifty yards out into the rolling sea surrounding the island. The pier was supported by fifty-foot tall concrete pilings. Atop the platform sat a wide building with every external wall made of transparent glass.

  It was the island’s world famous Museum of Modern Art. A somewhat modest two-story, fifty-five-thousand square-foot structure made all the more dramatic by its perch on the concrete and steel pier, positioned over the island’s sweeping coastline. The building’s aesthetic allure added to the diverse and unparalleled sampling of art within its walls. It was an attraction that drew art aficionados from all over the world.

  It was a dramatic location to hold a hostage, Cyrus thought. Boone certainly knew he was coming. Cyrus’s only advantage was that he knew Boone didn’t have the untapped resources of the Coalition behind him. He’d learned enough to understand that the games Boone and the Red Queen had been playing over the years only worked as long as they kept their true agenda quiet. If they could manipulate Coalition assets toward their own goals, all the better. But they could never outwardly utilize company assets without blowing their own cover.

  That much had been confirmed on Cyrus’s drive to the beach. He’d phoned Reid to see how matters had progressed with Charlie Greene. To his surprise, it had been Charlie who answered Reid’s phone. She put him on speaker while Reid explained that the information Cyrus provided had proven accurate. Subsequently, Reid moved Charlie into protective custody. The real problem was that he didn’t know how to proceed from there.

  Cyrus put Reid into a holding pattern. With a little luck, he would make major progress on cleaning up the mess before sunrise. But if things went sideways, he provided Reid with a contingency plan. He also asked Reid to do whatever he could to make sure that Charlie was safe. If Reid hadn’t heard from him in three days’ time, then it was up to him to do what he wanted with the information Cyrus had uncovered. Reid could go after the Red Queen with everything he had, or he could bury the info and go back to work. Cyrus said that he wouldn’t blame him one way or the other. The man had a family to consider and, as Cyrus further explained, if they hadn’t heard from him in three days, it was sol
id proof that hitting Boone and the Red Queen head-on wasn’t the smart solution.

  Anna Voss had been instrumental in Cyrus locating Natasha in the first place. Under normal circumstances, Cyrus might’ve had the resources to locate her using more traditional means. But without the Coalition’s support, not wanting to involve Dargo and not having time to involve local authorities, Anna was his best bet.

  Cyrus had put her in front of Natasha’s laptop and shown her the webpage that allowed users to locate lost or stolen cellphones. It had taken Anna all of five guesses to gain access to her sister’s account. After that, Cyrus had a GPS fix on the phone’s location—accurate within thirty feet.

  Not bad for off-the-shelf, consumer grade technology.

  Cyrus took Anna’s phone with him when he left the compound. Since Boone knew the number of his mobile, there was a good chance that its calls and location were being monitored, anyway. But he could use the web browser built into Anna’s phone to keep a real-time fix on Natasha’s location.

  As Cyrus looked at the two silhouettes visible through the glass wall of the distant building high above the beach, Cyrus finally had an answer to another question. He wasn’t sure why Boone hadn’t destroyed Natasha’s phone. Of course he knew it could be used to find them, but Boone had picked a meeting point that was far too showy to be secure. He’d done it for a reason. Not only did he know that Cyrus would come, the phone had been an invitation.

  Seeing movement in the shadows where one of the museum’s support pylons met the beach, Cyrus spotted the first sign of trouble. Actually, he was surprised he hadn’t encountered resistance earlier. Boone had posted perimeter guards after all.

  Nearly twenty minutes later, Cyrus had completed his circuit of the pier. He worked his way from the water’s edge, through the supporting pylons, and up the rocky slope to the corner of the building at ground level. Circling the front of the building, Cyrus moved to the north side before stopping short of the craggy ledge where the earth plunged back to the beach forty-feet below. By the time he’d completed his circuit of the facility, he’d eliminated four hostile parties without firing a shot or raising the alarm.

  Jumping a protective railing thirty-feet from the cliff, Cyrus stepped carefully through the tall, dry field grass and made his way to the ledge. Peering over the edge, he could see the jagged mesh of rocks on the cliff-face below. They mirrored the ones he’d climbed through on the south side of the building, halfway through his circuit of the facility. He knew them to be every bit as life-threatening as they appeared.

  To his left, the museum stretched out on to the specially designed pier. The pier reached out across the beach, through the surf, and into the rolling ocean beyond. While he needed to enter the building, Cyrus had to avoid the obvious use of the front door. If he were Boone, in spite of the perimeter guard, he would’ve booby-trapped the doors. At the very least, the doors would be rigged with a signal. And since the building was two stories tall, a roof-based incursion was out. There was no way to scale the glass face of the flat, two-story structure. All of this severely limited Cyrus’s access points.

  He eyed the distant railing of the gallery’s observation platform. It began about thirty-feet out from the cliff’s edge and ran for almost fifty yards before meeting with another expansive glass wall where the building extended beyond the breakers and over deeper water. At his feet, a forty-plus-foot drop to sharp rocks waiting to rend flesh from bone.

  Eyeing the railing suspiciously, Cyrus sized it up as he would any opponent. The jump was his number one concern, but his handholds on the other side were a close second. He would only have one chance, and if he botched it, Natasha’s fate wouldn’t be much better than his own.

  Opting against overthinking things, Cyrus backed up, pushing the tall scrub grass flat with each step of his hiking boots. He was creating a short, single use runway that would likely mean the difference between life and death.

  Dammit! Overthinking it again…

  When his backside touched the fence designed to keep spectators from getting too close to the edge of the cliff, Cyrus took two deep breaths, bent his knees, and pushed off with all his strength. His legs pumped down the narrow path, his feet moving nimbly across the uneven ground. His arms swung with measured precision and his lungs gorged with oxygen, only to expel it again with every fourth step. Then, reaching the uneven ledge, he flung himself into a dive with his hands pointed for the very top of the distant railing.

  With his breath seized in silent desperation, Cyrus watched the jagged outlines of the cliff-face pass below his airborne body. Every crack, crevice, and jagged point of volcanic rock waited to embrace him if he fell even an inch short of his goal. But as Cyrus’s gaze rose to meet his destination, and his hands prepared to seek purchase, he was shocked to see that while the distant handrail was drawing quickly closer, it was also moving up and away from his outstretched fingers.

  Clamping his teeth, Cyrus put every ounce of his focus into a stretch. The laws of physics had conspired to pull the handrail beyond his reach, but he still held desperate hope for Plan B.

  Before his mind could work through the basic physical responses necessary to stretch his form, he felt his finger bend upon impact with something. The fingernail of his second finger scraped, confirming what he was afraid had only been wishful thinking. Immediately, he snapped his right hand shut, wrapping it around a vertical baluster that supported the lookout perch’s perimeter railing.

  A moment later, Cyrus’s left hand caught up to his right and found purchase on a similar vertical iron support. His forward momentum didn’t impact as gracefully, however. His skull thudded hollowly, striking more of the upraised iron, before gravity took him fully into its grip, pulling his torso down and smashing his chest and chin against the concrete platform supporting the art gallery.

  A tear rolled from the corner of his eye, but a proud smile spanned his jaw as Cyrus pulled himself up and over the railing. He deposited himself unceremoniously on the balcony with a quiet ‘thud’.

  Not even sparing the time to regain his breath, Cyrus moved across the viewing platform and over to the sliding glass door. Beyond it was the art gallery, itself. With a gentle tug, the door slid easily aside on its track. Either someone had forgotten to lock it, or simply hadn’t considered it a security risk. After all, who would be foolish enough to come over the railing in such a way? All the same, he had his trusty set of lock picks standing by, just in case.

  Stepping onto the parquet floor, Cyrus strained to pick up a sound of any kind. He slid the door closed behind him, but still heard nothing. The building was shut down for the night, lit only by service floods that had been carefully concealed in the acoustic ceiling tiles. There would be no random security guards; Boone would’ve seen to that. That left Cyrus only one thing more to consider as he moved silently through the murky shadows between floor displays. What was Boone doing? Why go through all of this trouble?

  As he neared the edge of a series of interspersed, freestanding sculptures, Cyrus saw an open expanse of flooring was about to come fully into view. Just before he reached it, he slid beside a large boulder-like piece of stone that had several perfectly round orbs protruding from its surface. He didn’t know what the art represented, but to him it was a solid bullet stop and the last reasonable vantage point before the opening on the display floor.

  His gun gripped loosely in his right hand, Cyrus took a slow, silent glance around the edge of his hiding spot. Natasha sat on a divan. Her hands were folded in her lap and she looked very, very unhappy. The small, ornate, backless couch had been placed conspicuously in the center of a wide open section of space that looked almost like a dance floor set amid the sea of priceless art.

  It was a trap if ever there was one. And Boone was nowhere to be seen. Similarly, there didn’t seem to be anything to tether Natasha to her location which raised the next question. Why hadn’t she made a run for it?

  Yup, it’s a trap. But does Boone know I�
��m here?

  “I’m told this is an impressive collection,” Boone’s voice sounded from somewhere in the distance.

  Question answered.

  “But if you ask me, it’s all a bunch of useless crap. What’s the point of modern art, anyway? At least with the classics there’s some perceived value. Even if I can’t appreciate the beauty, I can recognize the talent—there’s at least some sort of history to consider. But modern art? What gives this junk value? I just don’t see it.”

  At the sound of Boone’s voice, Natasha became alert—even more on edge. Her eyes moved erratically, searching the surrounding shadows. Her divan was lit from above by a pale, muted, white glow. The floor around her was open for about fifty-feet in every direction before exhibits of one type or another came into view, making it look as if she was surrounded by a forest of indistinct shapes and shadows.

  Cyrus knew it was as bad idea to give away his position. Then again, if Boone knew he was here, Cyrus had already lost the upper hand. It didn’t matter that the perimeter team was gone. So long as Boone had Natasha, he was holding all the cards.

  But how did he have Natasha? Why was she sitting still and compliant on the sofa? Cyrus knew the woman to be anything but timid or demure. She was intelligent, with a fiery wit and a fierce temper. For her to sit by and remain compliant wasn’t a good sign.

  “You can put a man in class,” Cyrus called out into the murky shadows. “But you can’t put class in the man.”

  Since the source of Boone’s voice was difficult to locate, Cyrus hoped his mentor might have the same trouble. It must not have worked.

  Boone stepped from the shadow of a display at the perimeter of the empty floor, almost directly opposite of Cyrus. “Oh, give me a break,” Boone barked. “I know you. You think this is a bunch of pretentious crap, too, and you’ve been thinking it since you walked through the damn door! Nice Spiderman impersonation, by the way.”