“Make sure you take care of things quickly there.” He paused momentarily, considering something else. “What about the Las Vegas issue?”
“Our men are moving in now, sir. That problem will be eliminated within the hour.”
“Good.” Soon his operatives would have the location of the next chamber. And then, only a few short steps away from... His thoughts trailed away into a plethora of grand possibilities.
Up ahead, he could see the pale lights of his mountain compound. A mansion cut into the rock itself, the facility had cost millions. But it provided him with a hidden fortress where he could escape watchful eyes. Even satellites would have a difficult time spotting the 15,000-square-foot palace. So natural was its appearance with the surroundings. For a long time he’d stayed concealed in the shadows. Soon, he thought, the time for lying in wait would come to an end.
Chapter 6
Atlanta
Professor Terrance Nichols never had a chance.
Dark crimson oozed down the hole in the front corner of his drooped head; a splattering of it decorated the thin carpet on the other side.
His body still sat in his desk chair in front of a computer monitor. The screen was on, casting an eerie blue glow in the dark laboratory. In shock, Tommy surveyed the scene.
Crime scene investigators were all over the place working busily to gather any fragments of evidence they could. Others were taking pictures with their digital cameras trying to piece together the event. Police tape crisscrossed the doors and walls of the laboratory.
“Looks like it happened this morning,” Will said, standing slightly behind Tommy. “We’re doing everything we can to find out who did this and why.”
Tommy could only muster a slight nod.
“Tommy. We need your help here. You were friends with Nichols. Do you have any idea why anyone would do something like this?”
Inside, Tommy wondered. Surely it wasn’t happening again. Professor Borringer had been murdered because Tommy had gotten him involved. What had originally been a simple favor of translating some ancient text had gotten Borringer murdered. Was Nichols the second?
Will broke his thoughts. “Tommy, had you been working with Dr. Nichols on anything lately?”
Tommy snapped back to the moment and nodded. “Yeah,” he began. “I brought him a copy of the stone disc we found a few weeks ago. There was a code on the back of it, a sequence of letters and symbols unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Terrance told me he had some software that he believed could decipher the meaning of the sequence.”
“Is there anyone else that knows that you were working on this with him?”
“No.” Tommy shook his head. “Sean knows, but he is in Las Vegas.”
“He’s the only other one? McElroy doesn’t know?”
Joe McElroy had been instrumental in the discovery of the first chamber. His knowledge of ancient Native American history was staggering and had actually surprised Tommy at first. He’d been shot during the events leading up to the discovery and was taking a little time off to recover. Tommy was going to offer McElroy a job with IAA as soon as he felt better. They could use a person with his depth of knowledge. But Joe wasn’t aware that Tommy had been in contact with Dr. Nichols.
“No. He doesn’t know. He’s been taking it easy the last few weeks. Pretty sure his wife won’t let him leave the house either.”
Will chuckled slightly at the thought.
Tommy’s face was filled with regret. He somehow felt responsible for the death of his friend. Then his regret changed to curiosity. “Do you know what was on the computer?” Will shook his head. “Not yet. We have been trying to get the scene swept and make sure there is nothing we missed. You think whatever they were looking for might be on the hard drive?”
A group of men in sterile-looking outfits gently removed the body from the chair and placed it in an ordinary coroner’s bag. Tommy watched as the men carefully zipped the cocoon closed.
“Probably. Have you already done what you need to do to the area?” He looked at Will blankly.
“You want to take a look, don’t you?” Will seemed apprehensive.
“It’s my fault Terrance is dead. I need to know what he died for.”
Chapter 7
Las Vegas
Emily cast Wyatt a worried glance. “Whoever that is, isn’t with me,” she hissed. The fumbling noise at the door continued.
Sean stepped close to her and whispered in her ear, “Take off your clothes.”
“Excuse me?” She looked incredulous.
“Trust me. Just do it. Hurry up,” Sean said and undid the buttons on her blouse with a quick yank.
“You better know what you’re doing,” she said under her breath.
“Lie down on the couch there,” he pointed to the sofa. “And try to look sexy.”
She shot him a sarcastic stare while she hurriedly finished undressing down to her black bra and panties, a move that only took her a few seconds with the outfit she wore. Then she lay down on the couch, propping her head up on her hand in an effort to look casual yet alluring.
Sean had slipped over to the dresser and removed his gun from the drawer and taken up a position in the corner near the bed. He would be out of the intruders’ sight until they moved beyond the wall that separated the bedroom from the foyer and bathroom. Whoever was entering the room would first see a half-naked woman before they would catch a glimpse of his hiding place. He hoped that moment of distraction would give him the advantage.
The sound of the door opening echoed through the room. Sean held his breath. He couldn’t see Emily from his crouching position but imagined she was struggling to stay calm. She’d been a great agent, but sometimes fieldwork wasn’t her forte.
For a moment, there was no sign of the intruder. They were probably checking the bathroom first. Then Emily’s voice interrupted the tense silence. “Come in,” she said.
The man stepped into view wearing a tight, long-sleeved black shirt and matching pants. He looked like he was in his midthirties.
In his hand he carried a Glock with a sound suppressor attached, which he lowered slightly at the sight of the nearly naked middle-aged woman on the sofa.
Sean squeezed the trigger twice, sending two rounds into the left side of the man’s chest. The intruder gasped as he fell against the wall and crumpled on the floor. Suddenly, a muffled popping of shots came from behind the corner, creating spiderwebs of cracked glass through the large window at the other side of the room and sending Emily diving to the floor in between the coffee table and the couch. There was more than one of them.
James Collack was sipping a cup of coffee he’d purchased downstairs at the Coffee Bean when he heard the distant pop of shots being fired. Something had gone wrong. Both of his men had been sent into the room with silenced weapons. The sound of normal gunfire meant that the idiots had somehow alerted Wyatt to their presence.
He stood from his seat in the Venezia Tower Bridge and straightened his black suit and tie.
“Do you hear that?” The female voice came through his earpiece.
“Yeah, I hear it.” He paused. “Which is why we planned for this.”
From his position, Sean couldn’t tell what Emily was doing. She was pinned down on the other side of the room behind the sofa. Fortunately, she had a little extra cover because the living room portion of the suite was sunken in, about three steps lower than the bed area.
The silent pops ceased for a moment.
Sean wasn’t sure if he should move in to attack or wait for the assailant to come around the corner.
Before he could decide, three loud reports pierced through the silence from Emily’s position.
He was glad she still had her gun.
Sean used the new swath of cover fire to take a chance and go on the offensive. He hoped that her shots had momentarily thrown the intruders off guard. Deftly, he lurched over to the corner and looked down at Emily. With his hand he motioned for her to fire an
other shot in the vicinity where she’d been aiming. She accommodated by popping one more round into a painting that hung opposite of the bathroom door. As soon as she had, Sean turned the corner and unleashed two shots of his own at the man crouching by the bathroom door. The invader never had a chance. Emily’s shots had done exactly what Wyatt had hoped. He didn’t even get his weapon raised before bullets pierced the center of his chest and lower neck.
The body slumped to the floor, shocked eyes staring wide at the ceiling as the last few moments of life slipped away. Sean reached down and found an earpiece on the dead man. He pulled it up to his own ear in time to hear the instructions, “cover the elevators and the end of the hall.” He turned his attention to Emily who was already getting her clothes back on. “We have to go.”
She passed him an understanding glance and slipped on her shoes. Her blouse remained only half-buttoned, and now her hair was tousled. As she reached the railing of the three steps leading to the bed area, she turned around for a moment.
“Hurry,” Sean said.
She reached down and grabbed the glass and finished off the last of the cold drink.
“No sense in wasting good whiskey,” she gulped.
He just shook his head.
“OK, what’s the plan?”
“I just heard on the second guy’s radio that they are covering the end of the hall and the elevators. I say we go for the elevators.”
“But you just said there will be men there.” She looked dubious.
“There’s only two ways to go from this room. Toward the elevators provides more options for an exit. And we’re going to have a fight either way we go.”
He had a point.
She gave a quick nod.
Sean stepped to the door quickly and eased it open, taking a quick glance up and down the hall. Then, leading with his gun, he aimed first down the hall to the right toward the elevators and then to the left. Closed doors lined the vast, empty hallway.
“Clear both ways. I’ll cover you,” he said. “Go.”
She ducked underneath him as he continued looking both directions and darted across the hall to a doorway about two rooms down. He did the same and wedged in a portal across the hall from her. A muffled shot came from the other end of the hall, tearing into the wall next to Sean. Seconds later, a barrage of more rounds blasted their way.
Emily tucked into the doorway as far as possible. Fortunately, they’d chosen a spot where the walls jutted out slightly, perhaps for load bearing. But that little extra construction provided them safe refuge for the moment.
Sean peeked around the corner and sent a volley of three shots back down the hall, sending the four men at the other end reeling behind the corner. He looked back toward the elevators. Nothing yet.
She saw him flick his head to move and obeyed while he fired two more shots. Sean gave a quick glance back to make sure Emily had made it to the roundabout where the elevators met four dispersing hallways. She kept her gun trained onto the large area and motioned for him to continue.
Why weren’t the men at the end shooting? He didn’t have time to ponder and took off, letting one more shot loose into the vacant hallway behind him as he sprinted into the intersecting hall.
Sean quickly slid a new magazine into his gun.
“You always carry extra ammo on vacation?” she said.
He ignored the cynicism and pointed straight ahead beyond a circular vinyl couch.
“Tower bridge,” he ordered. Just as he did, an elevator dinged. “I don’t think that’s our ride,” he said.
Angela Weaver stood against the wall, calmly holding her Glock with both hands. The new box-style sound suppressor looked bulky but was actually quite light.
She’d ordered her four men to flush Wyatt out of his hotel room and down the hall toward the Venezia Tower. If they got lucky and made the kill? Bonus. She hadn’t expected that, though. Not from these mercenaries. She’d also not expected the woman who accompanied Wyatt. The face seemed familiar, but she couldn’t’ place it. Of course, in the confusion, one of the four men had taken a bullet to the leg and was writhing in agony. Blood trickled from his thigh.
Professional killers? Barely.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
The man shook his head while he clutched the wound. “I don’t think so.”
She lowered her weapon and squeezed the trigger, slamming a bullet into the man’s head. The body went limp as the other three looked on in shock. “Don’t get shot,” she said plainly. “I don’t pay you to get hit.”
The others nodded grimly.
The elevator doors began to open as Sean and Emily jolted across the room and two men in similar attire to the ones from before stepped out with weapons raised. Slightly surprised to see their targets so soon, they only got off a few wild shots as Sean and Emily fired first, pounding them with several rounds. One man dropped to the floor while the other slinked back into the elevator.
The doors closed quickly, something that had irritated Sean on a few occasions during his stay. This time, though, he was grateful as it bought them a few extra moments to clear the circular room and get into the tower bridge. He scooped up the fallen enemy’s handgun and kept moving.
As they turned a corner and entered the skyway at a full sprint, it was then he realized why the attack thus far had been somewhat half-assed. At the other end of the corridor stood a tall, young-looking man in a black suit and tie with four other men dressed in the matching long-sleeve shirts and black pants, all holding guns aimed in their direction. Three of the men were standing; two others crouched down on one knee, poised to fire. They were being herded to a place with no escape.
Chapter 8
Atlanta
Tommy carefully plugged in the narrow computer tower and connected it to a monitor. They’d taken the brain of the unit to a separate office from where the crime scene investigators were still working. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, but he knew that whoever had killed Terrance was looking for the same thing.
Tommy clicked the mouse on a few different files, hoping to find something, anything, that might be related to what Nichols had been working on. He went into Nichols’s recent files but noticed nothing unusual there. Thinking back to a few weeks ago, he remembered Sean telling him how they had found something at Borringer’s house. The old man had hidden it on a shelf, in plain sight. He typed in a search for files with the word decipher in them. Nothing came up. Then he tried typing in code breaker. Again, nothing.
Minutes went by as he kept hammering away at the keyboard trying to find any clue as to where the files could be. Finally, he leaned back and let out a huge sigh of frustration. “I have no idea what he had or where he put it,” Tommy said with resignation.
Will ran his hand through his hair. He was pretty sure Tommy Schultz and his friends still had no clue he was working for the Order. But he still had to be careful. In the background, a few other CSI workers were busy finishing up, packing cameras, tools, and other technical devices.
He racked his brain to come up with an answer, but these types of things weren’t Will’s strong point. He hated riddles. The more straightforward things were, the better.
Then Tommy had a thought. He sat forward again and clicked on the search bar, this time entering his own name. T-O-M-M-Y. The screen blinked for a second, and then one file appeared in the left-hand corner. It read, Tommy’s Project.
Will scooted in closer. “You got something?”
“Looks like it,” Tommy answered, annoyed that he’d been concerned with some complex combination of words when the answer was actually very simple.
He clicked on the file. A dialogue box opened. The words inside it were not what they’d wanted to see. Password required.
Chapter 9
Las Vegas
Sean was angry at himself for being so stupid. He should have seen what they were doing. Should have seen it from a mile away. Maybe he had gotten rusty.
A you
ng man in a suit stood at the end of the corridor with a smug look on his face. Something about him seemed familiar, but Sean couldn’t place it.
“Your luck has run out, Mr. Wyatt!” the suit yelled down the glass hallway. “Throw down your weapons! There’s no way out of here!”
Sean’s eyes darted around, trying to find an escape route, but there was none. The tower bridge was encased in glass and steel, ten floors above the ground. A jump would be suicide, if he could even get the glass to shatter.
“Who are you?” he shouted back.
The man didn’t answer at first. He apparently wasn’t into conversations. Instead, he raised his weapon. “Last chance, Wyatt!”
Suddenly, the suppressed sound of a small, automatic weapon could be heard off to the right of the enemy position. A bullet tore into the suit’s left shoulder and sent him reeling back, taking his aim away from Wyatt and Starks. A barrage of bullets sliced through the other four men as they all turned, too late to react. The first three were sent flying backward with round after round riddling their bodies. The fourth dove out of the way but had launched himself directly at Wyatt. Sean snapped out of his trance and finished him with a single shot to the head, and he fell facedown on the thin carpet. “Go!” he yelled at Emily. She didn’t wait to hear it twice and took off toward the pile of bodies.
Angela and her remaining men heard the chaos around the corner. They’d taken up a position at the entrance to the tower bridge and waited to see if their quarry would try to backtrack. She’d heard the exchange between James and Wyatt. Idiot. Why hadn’t he just shot them there? Now there was someone on the other side with what sounded like an automatic weapon.
She shoved one of the men aside and stepped to the corner to take a peek at what was happening. As she leaned her head around, a shot rang out and erupted the wall right in front of her face. Her reaction was quick, and she ducked back out of sight immediately. That was too close.
Sean Wyatt Compilation Box Set Page 32
