A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3)

by Michael G. Munz

  And that was the problem.

  “Ever see something in someone just because you need to?” He’d muttered it before he’d realized it.

  Jade was back at the window. “Come again?”

  “Oh.” He lay a still-jacketed arm across his eyes to block the room’s light from pushing through his eyelids. “I said good night.”

  “Sure, ace.” Geez, he could even hear her smirking. “Better not talk in your sleep . . . ”

  XXII

  THE CITY AIR DASHED into gaps between the hood of Michael’s sweatshirt to nip his ears and sneak down the back of his neck. He guessed the tall buildings surrounding the tiny park across the street from Fagles’s condo somehow funneled the wind into the park. It might even be designed that way: a subtle way to discourage “undesirables” from loitering in the pristine, upper-class district.

  With another shiver, Michael decided it worked well. Across the square stone park table from him, Jade did the same. Wind wobbled the pawns on the chess board between them. He’d have suggested they leave the park long ago if they hadn’t been there for something more than a chess game.

  Though Jade appeared focused on the board, her gaze flicked to their surroundings every few seconds in search of danger. She had yet to resume last night’s aborted discussion about the AoA, and Michael hadn’t encouraged it. Today they were focused on Fagles.

  So far. He tried to force his stomach to loosen, but with little to do but wait, it remained knotted.

  Jade captured his last knight with one of her bishops and then tugged her own hood further around her face. “I hate these things,” she said, indicating the hood.

  Michael cast a sidelong glance at the exit to Fagles’s building, a twenty-story glass and steel structure named the Azure. Two taxis and a small limo idled in wait, but no one had yet come out for them. “You’d rather be colder?” he asked Jade. “Or recognized?”

  “I’d rather be inside.”

  He looked back at the board. “It’s not my fault your hair’s so . . . ”

  “Gorgeous?” she offered. “Lustrous? Glowing?”

  “I was going to say ‘ostentatious.’”

  “Nice twenty-dollar word, ace. Admit it, you love it.”

  She might have a point there, Michael realized. He cleared his throat. “Holes, any luck yet?”

  Beside them on the table, sealed within Michael’s closed pack, Holes’s response came slightly muffled. “I am still infiltrating the building’s system. I remind you that complete stealth requires increased time when defeating security measures of the nature employed by the Azure. Please inform me should you wish me to trade speed for secrecy.”

  Michael shook his head but realized Holes couldn’t see it. “No, just keep at it.”

  “He’s getting snippy,” Jade said.

  “I’m not sure Marc programmed him for ‘snippy.’”

  “If you say so.” She glanced at the Azure. “Still your move.”

  Chess wasn’t his game. He knew how the pieces moved, a bit about their relative value, and that holding the center was important. Beyond that? He’d never played much. Black and white squares blended together as his eyes crossed and his thoughts drifted.

  Fagles was still in the building, or at least the phone from which he’d called Felix was. As soon as he left, and if Holes could make headway on the building security, Michael would go in—break in—and see what he could find.

  That assumed that there was anything useful to find inside. And that Michael could manage a successful break-in in the first place. Even with Holes on his side, break-ins weren’t his game either.

  In front of the Azure, a female tenant Michael didn’t recognize boarded the limo. Michael moved a pawn out to challenge Jade’s bishop just to get his turn over with. He belatedly realized he’d left the pawn completely unprotected.

  Jade would be coming into the Azure with him. What if he did find something there that he had to hide from her?

  “You don’t have to come in with me,” Michael said.

  “Can’t protect you from out here.”

  “Protect me from what?” He tried, not sure why he was arguing. “If it goes well, I’ll be in and out of there in fifteen minutes. If it goes bad, all you can do is get caught along with me.”

  “Really. You think that’s all I can do?” He couldn’t tell if she was amused or annoyed. She took his pawn with her bishop. “That’s cute.”

  “Those people in there aren’t out to kill me, they’re just doing their jobs. You can’t just shoot them for that.”

  “Who said anything about shooting them? There’s other ways to get you out of a jam.” She waved his captured knight and pawn at him. “Two heads are better than one. I got your back, don’t worry.”

  He looked into her violet eyes and caught himself smiling. “Thanks.”

  Though a smile of her own peeked from the corners of her lips, Jade shrugged and whispered, “Well, just doing my job.” She cleared her throat. “The trouble will be if we need to figure things out on the fly if Holes can’t—”

  “Have you ever killed anyone before?” Michael blurted.

  Jade leaned back from the table, her head cocked to one side. “Ambush.” She scowled. “Fun.”

  “It just . . . came out.” He stopped short of saying she didn’t have to answer it.

  “Mm, a lot of men have that problem, don’t they?”

  Michael ignored the joke; she hadn’t put much humor into it. Instead he waited with what he hoped was a sympathetic grimace. Jade leaned forward again. “I have. It’s not a topic most freelancers bring up. Or ask about, if they’re being polite.”

  “Polite isn’t a term I’d apply to a lot of freelancers,” he said.

  “Relatively speaking, then,” she said through a scowl. “Have you? Killed anyone?”

  He shook his head.

  “Want a free tip? Don’t ask how many.”

  He wondered if she meant of her, or of anyone. That Jade had killed didn’t surprise him, despite an initial flicker when she’d said so. She was a freelancer, had been for years, and Northgate was a violent place. Michael had often wondered how long he could live in the city himself without encountering a need to use lethal force. He couldn’t fault her for it, especially without any details.

  Some freelancers might have bragged about it. He’d never asked Diomedes. Would he have bragged?

  “The phone believed to be owned by Adrian Fagles has left the building,” Holes reported.

  Michael and Jade both scanned the Azure’s exit, seeing nothing. “He could have left from the parking garage,” Jade suggested.

  “Right. Holes, which way is he going? How fast?”

  “The phone is now shut off. At the time, it was moving north at a rate of speed indicative of a ground vehicle. I believe I have analyzed hotel security to provide favorable probabilities of undetected physical access to Mr. Fagles’s unit for a limited time.”

  “How limited?”

  “A precision estimate is unavailable until we have entered. Individual unit security is maintained on an isolated system I am unable to reach, however the security system manufacturer listed in hotel purchase records—”

  “Holes!” Michael said. “Just give us a rough estimate.”

  “Between five to twenty minutes following our hypothetical entry into Mr. Fagles’s unit. Bypassing door security to get inside the unit should be a trivial matter for Michael.”

  Jade frowned. “Five minutes isn’t much time.”

  “Five minutes is a worst-case estimate only.”

  “We’ll just have to make the most of what we get, I guess,” Michael said. “Let’s do it.”

  “I will arrange for falsified guest credentials to allow you into the front door. Please stand by.”

  A short while later, a pair of eyes caught sight of Michael and Jade from down the block, moments before they entered the revolving door of the Azure’s front entrance.

  He’d been too late
to stop them! Yet there were other options. He hurried toward the Azure, in search of a back entrance.

  XXIII

  “TWO CLUBS, A FANCY HOTEL, and now swanky condominiums,” Jade said as they left the Azure’s elevator. “You take me all the great places. And that windy-ass park.”

  “Yeah, can’t forget the park.” Michael counted the doors ahead. The third one down would belong to Fagles. Directly above it lurked a tiny, dark, half-globe. “Are those cameras above the doors, Holes?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Michael slowed his pace. Jade matched him. “Um, are they active?”

  “Nope. Neutral looping will continue for eighty-three more seconds before system detection.”

  They pushed forward. “You can beat the door that fast?” Jade asked Michael.

  “Holes says I can.”

  “Riiight.”

  Aside Fagles’s door waited a keypad lock with thumbprint scanner. He lifted his hand and then stopped, with a glance at Jade. Should he make a show of it?

  Taking his hesitation for a tacit directive, Jade pressed her palm to the center of the door to do her customary check for occupants. He busied himself at studying the lock mechanism until, with a shake of her head, she confirmed the condo was empty. Deciding it best to move quickly, Michael swallowed, pressed his right palm against the thumbprint scanner, and waited.

  Seconds passed. He could feel Jade’s eyes on him. Come on, any time now . . .

  The AoA microchip embedded in his palm hummed. The lock’s indicator light flashed green. The door clicked open.

  “Go!” Michael needn’t have said it: Jade was in the door before he’d even gotten it out. He darted after her.

  The floor of the entryway was stained wood, smooth and dark. It created a broad platform bounded by the condo’s wall to their right and a carved wooden railing, abutted by a potted Japanese maple, to their left. Ahead of them, after a single step down, yawned Fagles’s living room. There was only time for Michael to register a sense of dark browns, deep reds and traces of silver in the décor before he cast about for the unit’s security alarm panel.

  He spotted it on the wall between the front door and an antique, brass-framed mirror. Michael pulled Holes’s platform from his pack and set the A.I. atop a parson’s table beneath the mirror while Jade shut the door behind him.

  The alarm panel read: “ENTRY RECORDED. ENTER CODE TO DEACTIVATE ALARM.” A timer showed “28” and counting down. Shit, was there time? How did he even connect Holes to the system?

  “Holes? You see this? What do I do?”

  “Please stand by,” was the only response.

  27.

  26.

  He and Jade exchanged alarmed glances a moment before pulling ski masks from their pockets to shove over their faces.

  23.

  “He is doing something, right?”

  22.

  Was he? He must be, Michael thought. Holes wouldn’t just freeze up. It was a wireless connection or something. It had to be!

  “Holes?” he tried.

  The readout froze at 22.

  “I have halted the system,” Holes reported. “The alarm panel allows minimal-range wireless access for home owners’ and authorized security technicians’ ease of use.”

  “Spare us the sales pitch,” Jade said. “How long can you hold it?”

  “Ten to twenty minutes before redundant system checks will detect the intrusion. I am applying maximum effort to fool the system, but this state is not sustainable. I will warn you when the alarm system re-engagement is imminent.”

  The readout blinked back to 30.

  Michael let out a held breath and turned back to Jade. “Okay, wait here and watch the door. I’ll see what I can—”

  “Not until I clear the rest of this place.” Jade jerked a thumb toward a hall leading out of the living room. “Someone might be back there. Don’t waste time on a losing argument, ace.”

  He gritted his teeth with a glance at the alarm. “Make it quick.”

  “Oh, I’ll be gentle.”

  Jade darted from the entryway step with a spring that belied the silence of her landing, and then dashed around a leather couch. The dark red throw rug it sat on muffled the sounds of her boots before she disappeared down the hall.

  Michael followed, scanning every inch of the living room for something useful. He saw little beyond Fagles’s apparent affinity for snake-skin leather. There was a wet bar, a video screen spread atop a real wood-burning fireplace, a tastefully appointed bookshelf whose contents appeared more decorative than enjoyed, and chairs for entertaining. The place was spotless, as if a cleaning service had just left. Michael wondered at the lack of personal touches.

  Michael also wondered if the screen would allow access to Fagles’s computer system, but his gut told them that anything worth finding wouldn’t be so prominent. Jade had yet to return from the hallway.

  He went to the bookcase. He’d seen movies with hidden panels in bookcases. Did people really do that? Test-pulls on a few books yielded nothing.

  “It’s clear.” Michael jumped at the voice and spun to see Jade coming out of the hallway. “Found something, though. Go have a look: bedroom wall on the left. I’ll be there in a sec.”

  He hurried down the hall.

  Jade continued on toward another doorway leading to what looked to be a darkened kitchen and called out afterward, “Guy’s got the tightest espresso maker in the world, here!”

  Fagles’s bedroom décor matched his living room, only with a smaller screen, no fireplace, and more bookshelves. Three neckties of varied colors and patterns lay discarded on the made bedspread. Windows made up one entire wall, their view shielded with retractable shades.

  Michael checked the left wall: a carved wooden door stood closed, with a palm scanner beside it. Bingo.

  But the scanner looked different from the keypad entry to Fagles’s front door. Would his AoA chip work on it? One way to find out.

  He pushed his palm to the scanner and waited.

  The scanner glowed red. The only hum came not from his chip but the buzz that denied him access.

  And Holes is tied up, if he can even help with this sort of thing. “Well, shit,” he said.

  “Magic hands aren’t perfect, mm?”

  He turned to find Jade behind him, brandishing a huge kitchen knife. Her other hand clutched a meat tenderizer mallet. Michael stepped back on reflex.

  Jade rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax. And stand back.”

  Michael did as she asked, mystified. She couldn’t be planning to pound through the door . . . ? Instead, she wedged the knife blade between the door and the metal frame, and then hammered it in deeper with the mallet. Both metal and wood creaked as the knife pushed the door tighter into the frame.

  Apparently satisfied, Jade let the mallet drop to the floor. “What sort of implant you got in there, anyway?”

  “In my hand? I, uh, don’t remember.”

  In the midst of pulling up one sleeve to uncover her right wrist, Jade actually snorted. “Uh huh.” She made a few motions against that wrist with the thumb of her left hand, as if adjusting something. “You’re lucky I’m not just an ass-kicking pretty face. Still got that jimmy? Jam it in the door, as close to the top of the frame as you can, and pry it until the knife falls loose, then hold it there.”

  Michael pulled out the short pry bar he’d brought just in case and found a spot that left him pushing the bar with both hands above his head. The knife clattered to the floor by his foot.

  “Now,” she said, “this only might work. Think happy thoughts, and don’t let go of that bar.” She put her hand—the one with the taser, he recalled—against the scanner. Electricity flared. The lights on the scanner winked out, and Michael felt a solid thunk against the top of the door through the pry bar.

  Jade withdrew her hand, fingers wriggling. “Most locks like this use power to keep the lock engaged. Unlock it and it stops resisting a spring that pulls the locking bol
t out of the door. Keeps you from getting trapped inside if the mechanism shorts out. But if the lock is actually tampered with via, oh, say, a power surge, deadlock bolts fall down into shafts in the top of the door to secure it against us nasty intruders.”

  She pointed to the pry bar at the top of the door. “Push that edge in too far, though, and you might keep the deadlocks from falling into their shafts. Let’s hope you did that.” She took hold of the door knob with both hands. “But that pressure you’re putting on the door also keeps the spring bolt down here from pulling of its slot to unlock the door. So you’re going to hold the top where it is, and I’m going to very carefully pull this part in. If we’re good, and if we’re lucky, my part pops out, yours stays out, and we get the door open. Got it?”

  “Pray for luck? Got it.”

  “Right. And use those big muscle-things of yours. Go!”

  Michael clenched the pry bar until it bit into his hands, trying to keep the door’s top held in place while Jade pulled the knob—tentatively—toward them. Haunted by the image of pushing so hard he’d break the pry bar out of the frame and ruin her whole effort, he struggled to find a balance between too much force and too little.

  From below came a tiny scrape followed by a click. Jade gave a cry of victory and pushed the door inward so fast Michael had to catch himself on the frame to keep from falling into the room.

  “Hah!” Jade cried. “Teamwork!” Before Michael could stop her, Jade pulled her Lantek and pushed into the room. She went down on one knee just inside the doorway, weapon out in front of her, scoping the room. Michael took cover behind the door frame and pushed the door open wider.

  They needn’t have worried. The room—Fagles’s private office, judging by the ficus-flanked computer desk—was deserted. Except, was that a computer desk? A dark green towel covered what could be a workstation, but Michael couldn’t be sure. A credenza along the wall facing the desk caught his eye. More books, trinkets that might be trophies, and a few bottles of brandy populated the credenza’s surface. A box of 7.65mm auto-pistol ammunition sat in one corner, beside an empty glass. An oil painting of what looked like Paris hung on the wall above.