Max Collins - Before the Dawn

But Moody sent up a quick one, anyway, for Max’s safety, in the moment before the colonel fired the automatic, sending a bullet through Moody’s left temple, crashing through his right, burying itself in the floor.

“Goddamn it!” the Russian blurted, rushing over. “What’s wrong with you!”

Lydecker took Kafelnikov by the arm and whispered, as if to a lover, in the man’s ear: “What’s wrong with you, Mikhail? You made me dispatch him: He heard you call me by name. I wasn’t here... remember?”

Then, lip twitching with disgust, Lydecker placed the automatic back in the Russian’s hand and shoved the man away from him.

Brood members, looking on, exchanged glances, surprised to see their leader take such abuse without protest.

As Lydecker walked toward the exit, the Russian called, “With him dead, how the hell am I supposed to find the stone?”

Without turning, Lydecker said, “It’s probably somewhere in the building. Look for it yourself... You have several hours before any police show... I’ve seen to that.”

The Russian said, “ You’ve got manpower! At least pitch in—”

From the doorway, Lydecker bestowed a mild smile on the Russian. “You’ve got all the help from me you’re going to get today... Let me know if you get a lead on the girl.”

Then the blond man in black glanced around at the dozens of dead Clan members, who lay like discarded candy wrappers on the theater floor.

“Terrible thing to do to a bunch of kids,” Lydecker muttered.

And was gone.

Under the cover of a dense fog, Max made her way across Puget Sound in a small battered motorboat, the outboard chugging like a tired vacuum cleaner — she had “borrowed” it from a nearby group of similar craft designated for tourist rental, and a sleeker, faster number would have been preferable, of course... but the absence of such a boat might have raised too much attention.

Such tactics were second-nature to the X5-Unit. The night air was windless but cool, almost cold. Vashon Island, her destination — home of her target — lay somewhere in the mist off the port bow. In her black turtleneck, black slacks, and rubber-soled boots — and the new black leather vest with pockets for all her toys — she might have been (but was not) a commando mounting a one-woman raid. The ensemble had been expensive, but even a bandit could be stylin’, right?

That brittle chill in the air promised a deeper cold to come, and Max was glad she hadn’t had to swim. Just because she’d been genetically engineered to ignore such trivialities as freezing her buns off, she saw no reason to embrace hardship.

As the boat putt-putted into the fog, Max kept the throttle down on the motor, both for safety’s sake, on this pea-soupy night, and so as not to advertise her approach. It was possible there was security, in this wealthy part of the world, that she had not anticipated.

Some security she could anticipate. The Sterling home, a secluded multimillion-dollar castle on Vashon Island, sat on Southwest Shawnee Road behind a tall brick-and-concrete wall and would undoubtedly boast a state-of-the-art system. Main access to the island was provided by toll ferries — one running to the northern end, one to the southern tip — though Max knew they were not the only avenues of approach.

The precious object she sought might be covered by video, infrared, pressure alarms, and God only knew what else; but Max still had to smile. With no mines and no lasers trying to dissuade her, this time around, a simple home invasion would be a walk in the park... or anyway, cruise on the lake.

Even now, as she moved through the fog with single-minded purpose, Max remained in something of a personal fog. She was disappointed that her straight life had required this crooked side trip; she wished that the straight-and-narrow path could have stretched endlessly on for her...

She liked the idea of not being a burglar; even relished the notion of becoming just another straight in a world of straights. But she could only kid herself so long: she was not normal, not straight, merely hiding in that world, behind that facade.

Keeping gas in her Ninja, when fuel was over eight bucks a gallon, having the occasional meal and now and then a beer — and paying off-the-books rent, even with Kendra’s help — was about all her pitiful messenger wages covered. And a normal person — a straight person — could put up with that, make do with eking out an existence.

But when you added in buying tryptophan off the street, to control her seizures — one of the genetic drawbacks of her Manticore breeding — and in particular factored in funding her efforts to find Seth and her other siblings... well, maybe Max had known all along it was only a matter of time before she’d have to turn back to what Moody had taught her — maybe crime was her true calling.

She just wished it hadn’t come back around so soon.

In particular, keeping that private eye on the trail of Seth (and Hannah) would soon require more cash. Sure, Vogelsang may have been a trifle seedy, but Max needed that. An investigative agency higher up the food chain would have cost even more, might have lacked the P.I.’s usefully shady connections, and might be too tied in with the upper-echelon of the city, the very radar she was trying to fly under.

Since arriving in Seattle, Max had been reading the local papers on line, borrowing Kendra’s laptop, in an attempt to find out more about Eyes Only and, she hoped, Seth. But in more recent days, she had turned her Moody-trained eye toward potential scores, as well.

Frustratingly, she hadn’t learned anything substantial about Eyes Only — he was a “menace,” according to the mayor, and “awards for information leading to yada yada yada” — and had come up with zip on Seth, also... no coverage since that scrap with the cops that SNN had covered.

But she had stumbled across a story about a billionaire art collector — and political contributor — named Jared Sterling.

The focus of the recent press attention was Sterling’s latest “major” acquisition, an original Grant Wood painting called Death on the Ridge Road. Color photos showed Sterling in his late twenties, not bad looking... thick blond widow’s peaked hair with a well-trimmed beard, and piercing blue eyes, short, straight nose, thin decisive line of a mouth, turning up in a sly smile, in this photo, anyway.

Good looking and loaded, she’d thought as she stared the LCD screen; maybe I oughta give up burglary and go on the sugar-daddy hunt...

In several of the photos — shown next to Sterling — the painting was a vaguely cartoony illustration of an antique red truck bearing down on a black car turned sideways on a twisting road... painted in 1935, the cutline indicated.

Max didn’t know the painting, but — thanks to Moody’s schooling — she certainly knew Grant Wood, and recognized the distinctive style. And she knew as well that Wood works were fetching as much as ninety to a hundred thousand, now that so much Americana was being sold off.

Due to her particularly warped upbringing, Max had little sense of what America had once meant; but she knew Moody had been disturbed by such things. With the Baseball Hall of Fame sold and moved to Kyoto, Japan — not to mention the Statue of Liberty, purchased by the Sultan of Brunei — it was obvious that America (Moody would rant), and all her possessions, were for sale “to the highest goddamn bidder.”

To Max, however, what this painting meant was one thing: with proper fencing, it would cover Vogelsang’s expenses for a good, long while...