Mind Game (GhostWalkers #2)(94)
Author: Christine Feehan

He walked with her to the door and opened it, allowing the night air inside. “Lily is an incredible woman. She was raised with every luxury and she knows which fork to use at a dinner party and who’s who in the world of high finance. She can mingle with the president and not bat an eyelash. In fact, she has, but she walks out when she needs to walk out. It’s one of the first rules she taught us about being in a crowd or a social situation. You just look mysterious and intriguing.”

Dahlia laughed. “I’d really look mysterious and intriguing if I started the White House on fire. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be doing much mingling in that direction.”

He grinned at her. “Can you imagine the Secret Service hunting for the firestarter, and you’re sitting at the table with the president, looking innocent?”

“Thanks, Kaden.” She looked into the night. The clouds boiled and churned, darkening the sky even more. The wind whistled between the buildings and bent the trees and bushes nearly double. “Look at this. When did this storm front move in? I checked the weather earlier and they said possibility of a storm. I don’t think the weather people ever get it right. Do you think anything else can go wrong tonight?”

Kaden turned to look at Nicolas coming up behind her and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’d say all kinds of things could go wrong.”

Dahlia knew Nicolas was there by the strange reaction of her body, the way it came to life. The way the energy dissipated. By the stillness in Kaden. She refused to turn around, staring out into the night instead. “You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

“No, but I wanted to,” he replied honestly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t help the situation any by getting angry, did I?”

“No, but part of me was glad you said it.”

Nicolas wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “The weather is looking a little grim. Maybe we should postpone this until the storm passes.”

“No, the storm might help. I want this over with.”

“All right, we’ll set up then. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dahlia inhaled the night. She always felt safe in the cover of darkness. Her body was already humming, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and her brain was on overdrive. This was what she loved, utilizing the unusual talents she had. It was what always saved her, what always kept pain and heartache at bay. She could walk through the empty streets and look at the homes and imagine she was part of a community. She could walk along the sidewalks and stare into store windows and pretend she was shopping with friends. She could almost be normal in the dark of night.

High above the streets, she shot out a cable to hook on the rooftop of the Lombard building. She tested the line to make certain the hook was secure and then anchored it. All the while she watched the building and moved from angle to angle to get a feel for the rhythm and movement taking place in the offices on each floor and on the roof.

A guard with a dog walked the ground-floor corridors. The building was dark above the third floor. It looked empty and inviting, but her senses told her it wasn’t so. The vault was in the center of the building. Not the basement as one would think, but where all the researchers could have easy access. The building was built like a hive, with the vault as the center hub of activity. It was an enormous room with security cameras and panels for retinal scans, fingerprints, and access codes. She had watched two of the men insert keys into the locks and turn them simultaneously to gain entrance into the vault. Everything from data to prototypes was locked up in the vault when the researchers went home. It was the perfect place to hide stolen data. Who would ever know the difference?

Lombard Inc. had a good thing going. They stole ideas, hid them in a vault where no one would look, and after a few weeks or months, pulled the ideas back out of storage, modified them slightly, and put them into production under their own label. It was an amazingly effective, lucrative scheme. And now they’d decided to line their pockets even further by developing classified weapons and selling them to any government or terrorist group willing to pay an exorbitant price.

Dahlia turned her attention back to the problem of getting to the rooftop without being detected. The wind was particularly vicious, one of the greatest hazards of using a cable to cross between high buildings. She studied the angles of the roof with an expert eye. When cable running, she started out firmly on the cord, but most of the time, she did levitate just above it, and it took tremendous concentration on her part to generate forward momentum while levitating. It was actually faster to run, but not quite as safe. The steady drizzle wouldn’t help, making the cable slick, so she decided to do a combination of both.

Dahlia leapt out onto the cable, and began to run, nearly levitating as she raced across the long stretch between the two buildings. The wind blew in fierce gusts, almost as if it were taking deliberate aim and blowing straight at her to knock her off the cable. It caught her sideways a couple of times, nearly taking her off the thin line strung between the two rooftops. She never looked down, never took her eyes or her mind off her destination. She could control the sag in the cable and even the sway to some extent, but it was impossible to control the wind. A particularly strong gust caught her from the side, slamming into her hard enough to throw her off the cable.

Startled, she fell, flinging out her gloved hand to catch the braided steel as she toppled. Her fist closed around it, nearly yanking her arm out of her socket. She could hear Nicolas’s gasp of horror echo in her mind, but he shut off his thoughts to allow her complete concentration. She caught the cable with both hands and dangled several stories above ground waiting for the wind to die down. With few structures to impede it, the wind could be ferocious.

Using her gymnastic and high-wire skills, Dahlia swung her legs up and over the cable until she was hanging by her knees. Drops of rain splashed over her neck and ran down her face. Dahlia reached through her legs and pulled herself into a sitting position. Below her, the streetlights looked a hazy yellow through the dreary mist. She stared down at the strange-colored halo of light to orient herself when she saw the shadow move out of the alcove of a doorway. Recognition was immediate.

There had always seemed a furtiveness about the way he had moved. Roman Howard, Martin’s brother, had been the man at Rutgers University, just outside Dr. Ellington’s office. He had walked by casually, just like any other student, but she had noticed him because he caused every instinct to flare into self-preservation mode. He had been hunting that day, already staking out the professor and marking him for the kill. Dahlia had been just another student herself, and he hadn’t noticed her blending in as she always was able to do, a chameleon when necessary.