Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

Miller lowered the gun. Whoever this woman was, he could see she’d gone through hell.

“What’s your name?”

When she kept wiping at the blood, Miller took her face in his hand and turned her toward him.

“What’s your name?”

Her lips quivered for a moment, but after a deep breath, she found a measure of self-control and spoke. “Elizabeth Adler. I— I’m a German liaison for Interpol.”

“Interpol?”

“I coordinate with the FBI and several European agencies on criminal activities that involve multiple countries.”

“You’re not a field agent?”

“Interpol has no field agents.”

Miller’s knowledge of Interpol came to him in a flash. The organization—despite what Hollywood and novelists would have the world believe—didn’t hunt down criminals and solve cases. That’s not to say they weren’t important; coordinating police forces from multiple countries that might not always have the same agenda was no easy task. And thanks to their efforts, many international criminal organizations and terrorist plots had been uncovered. They were the good guys.

But, if President Bensson was right, even the good guys could be bad guys. Her being an Interpol liaison didn’t necessarily make her trustworthy.

“Back to the blood,” he said. “Whose is it?”

She glanced down at her blood-splattered arm, but didn’t linger. She turned back to him and said, “My boss’s.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t think so. I hit him with the gun.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I have something important.”

When Adler pronounced “something” as “somesing,” Miller tensed. He wasn’t sure if he could ever hear a German accent again without feeling threatened. Ignoring her accent as best he could, he listened to her story.

“Something about the iron.”

“The attacks.”

She nodded. “I took it to the local Interpol chief. After he saw it, he—” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “He tried to kill me.”

She brushed her hair away from her face and neck. There was a cut just below the hairline on her forehead, but it was the ring of bruising around her neck that held his attention. Someone had damn near squeezed the life out of her.

“I got his gun. Hit him in the head. Here,” she said, rubbing her temple.

“He fell on you?”

She pursed her lips. “I thought I would die beneath him.”

“But you didn’t. You got away. And… you came here.”

With a sniff, she said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“The chief was on the phone when I entered his office, finishing a conversation and taking notes. Before he hung up, he said, ‘I’ll get word to the others. We’ll find him and take care of the problem.’” Adler pulled herself up and sat on the edge of the cushionless couch. “After I knocked him out, I looked at the note.” She reached into her pocket and took out a folded slip of paper. She handed it to him.

Miller opened the paper and saw just two handwritten words: Lincoln Miller.

“I had seen you on TV. After everything you’d been through, I knew they weren’t looking for you to congratulate you. I wanted to find you first. The hospital said you’d left, so I came here. I thought I could trust you.”

Miller shook his head. “You and everyone else.”

“What?”

“Never mind. How did you find me?”

“I have contacts with the FBI and D.C. police. It wasn’t hard.”

“Okay. But what were you looking for? Why did you toss my—” A warning Klaxon sounded loud in Miller’s gut. He stood and raised his gun toward the empty apartment. “You didn’t toss the apartment, did you?”

“No, why would—”

Miller held an open palm up. “Shh!”

Leading with the gun, Miller moved from the living room to the kitchen. The place wasn’t big, but there were a few nooks and crannies that would make great hiding places, one of which contained some weapons he thought might come in handy.

“What are you doing?” Adler whispered. She was a few steps behind him, clutching her purse to her chest. “There’s no one here. I checked.”

“Whoever did this was searching for something. I—”

“What where they searching for?”

That was the million-dollar question. To his knowledge, Miller had nothing to hide, and certainly nothing to find. So if they weren’t searching for something, what were they—

“Shit,” Miller said, turning his attention to the open apartment door.

“What?”

“It’s a distraction.”

“For what?”

The answer came a moment later. Glass shattered in the living room. Miller spun, expecting to see someone swinging through the window. What he saw was much smaller, and much more deadly. The grenade bounced off the couch and rolled into the center of the living room. It wasn’t a smoke or flashbang, either. This was the real deal—a frag grenade that would shred their bodies to pieces. Whoever had thrown it through the window had no intention of capturing them alive.

Miller turned to Adler and was surprised to see her moving fast in his direction. Her open hands struck him hard in the chest and shoved him into the open bathroom. Miller saw where they were headed, spun around, and ran. He dove into the tub as Adler leapt atop him. The impact of striking the tub hurt like hell, but when the grenade exploded, they survived without injury.

Ignoring the loud ringing in his ears, Miller jumped up and pulled Adler to her feet. “Good reflexes for a liaison,” he said.

She shrugged. “I played a lot of sports.”

Good, he thought, she’s not falling apart. Even soldiers sometimes check out when things start exploding. Adler was wide-eyed, but thinking clearly and still mobile. Knowing they most likely had just seconds, he yanked her out of the bathroom and into the hall. The living room lay in ruins. A three-foot-round hole had been blown through the floor into the apartment below.

Miller ran for the hole. There were two exits from his apartment—the main entrance and the fire escape. The metallic clang of footfalls on the fire escape were impossible to mistake. The shouts rising up the stairwell meant both exits were covered. That left them only one option.

“Into the hole,” he said.

To his surprise and relief, Adler didn’t question the order. She sat on the floor, dangled her legs into the hole, and scooted over the edge. He watched her land far more gracefully than he thought he would manage. When she stepped out of the way he noticed she was still holding on to her purse.

But there was no time to think about why the purse was so important. Red dots bounced on the hallway wall outside his apartment. The men coming up to greet him had weapons with laser sights. He took aim, waiting for the first man to show himself. Miller was outmanned and outgunned, but a single shot could stop an enemy cold. Precision often achieved the same level of shock and awe as brute strength.

When the first man’s black-masked head rose into view, Miller squeezed off a single shot. The man toppled forward and dropped from view, leaving a splash of red on the opposite wall.

“Shit!” shouted a voice from the hallway. “Tango is down! Viper Two, Viper Two, target is alive and armed. Proceed with caution.”

Miller’s gut twisted. Everything about the attack screamed U.S. military.

“Copy that,” came a voice from the back window of the kitchen.

As Miller spun toward the window and took aim, he heard the same voice shout, “Shit!” He squeezed off two more shots. He couldn’t see who was outside the window, he just didn’t want anyone to see his escape route. He knelt, fired another shot into the hallway, and then dropped through the floor.