Max Collins - Before the Dawn

She swung at the waist, twisting her body as if exercising, and one of those elbows he’d requested caught Morales on the side of the head.

Pitching sideways from the blow, he got off one wild shot that buried itself in the wall, between two of those valuable pictures. She thrust her right foot into his throat, and — already off-balance — he tumbled backward, gasping for breath. Before he hit the floor, Max had kicked the gun from his fingers and it went spinning across the waxed wood floor, clattering against the floorboards clear across the room.

Morales gurgled and seemed vaguely conscious, but showed no sign of getting up.

Behind her, in that doorway Sterling had slipped out, a deep voice growled, “Freeze!”

Instead, Max did two cartwheels, and was into her back flip when the tall crew-cut leader’s pistol coughed harshly, twice, both rounds missing the blur that was Max and burying themselves in a wall and a painting, respectively.

The catlike home invader landed in front of him, perhaps a yard separating them, enough room for her to kick the pistol from his hand. Then she pirouetted, back-kicked the estate’s top security man in the belly, folding him up, and sent him flying across the room, where he smacked into a wall hard enough to make several pictures hang crooked.

He still had that gun, so she went to him, incredibly fast, and when he tried to rise, and looked at where she’d been, the intruder was gone... and he then glanced to his right, where she was now standing.

“Can’t play with you,” she said. “Sorry...”

Her left foot caught him in the groin and he cried out shrilly and sagged to the floor again. Max was taking no chances, however, and as soon as her left foot touched the floor, her right foot came up and caught the leader under the chin, knocking him unconscious and sending him sliding across the waxed surface, like a kid on a sled.

She sprinted back to where Morales lay bubbling — he was unconscious now — and snatched up the waterproof bag. Then she smashed the Plexiglas case with a kick, and — for the second time! — grabbed the precious Heart of the Ocean, triggering an alarm: a buzzerlike bawling.

Max slipped the necklace into a vest pocket, which she zipped shut, and carried the bag with the painting in her left hand as she moved toward the door that would take her back to the foyer — she had come in the front way, she’d go out the same.

She was heading for the security keypad when she all but bumped into the black guy, Maurer, finally down from upstairs, looking a little disheveled, and sweaty, from an apparently thorough and fruitless search of the vast upper floors. The MP7A was in his hands, and he swung it up, leveling the weapon at her...

... but Max leapt high and with a martial-arts kick sent the weapon flying; when the MP7A landed on the marble floor, hitting hard, it fired off its own burst and shattered a priceless Frank Lloyd Wright chair into kindling.

Maurer was no pushover, however, and he came roaring at her with his fists raised.

“Wanna box?” she asked.

A straight right broke his nose and another landed squarely on his jaw with a satisfying crunch. Maurer fell backward, stiff-legged, and did a backward pratfall, his head smacking on the marble. The only question Max had was whether he was out from her punch, or from losing that battle with the floor...

She didn’t bother to Gameboy the keypad; it wasn’t like they didn’t know she was there. She threw open the front door, triggering the alarm — this one an annoying honking, which made an off-key counterpoint to the gallery buzzer (different sounds apparently indicated different security breach points — Max admired the strategy).

Bad move, she thought, realizing she should have taken the time to punch in the keycode; mentally, she pictured Moody frowning and shaking his head at her.

Those dueling alarms would, with honking and screeching, draw the attention not only of the rest of the security team, but cops and neighbors and anybody for at least a square mile who wasn’t stone-cold deaf.

Halfway across the yard, slipping back into the fog, she suddenly saw Jackson emerging from the swirling mist, crossing toward her, his MP7A raised.

Not waiting for him to act, Max launched herself to one side, diving, rolling, disappearing into the smokelike fog.

The guard knew enough not to fire into the fog — he might shoot one of his own team — and when he pursued her, assuming she was on the move, almost ran into her.

Startled, his eyes popped open, and before he could fire, she kicked him in the side of the head, dropping him out-cold to the lawn like a toppled garden gnome.

With those alarms still blaring like dissonant horror-show music, waterproof bag tucked under an arm, Max circled the house, leapt the wall, and approached her hidden boat carefully, in case any of Sterling’s security team had scouted ahead.

But only her boat was waiting, and she eased it out onto the lapping water and she, the Grant Wood, the Heart of the Ocean, and the ungainly tourist craft disappeared onto the fog-flung lake.

Not exactly a perfect heist, but the haul was good, and even with a few flubs, she knew Moody would be proud of his girl. This was a seven-figure evening, easy, enough to finance the search for Seth and allow her to slip back into the anonymity of the straight life... for a while anyway.

A few hours later, with the glow of the coming day already lightening the easterly sky, Max sat on the couch in her squatter’s flat, staring at the necklace.

She still had no idea how Sterling had ended up with it, and now she wondered what she was going to do with it. The painting needed to be fenced, which would cover immediate expenses; unfortunately, she had no such connections in Seattle... yet.

She had not called Moody in LA, since getting to town and settling into this new life; she’d wanted a clean break... but now she had to talk to him. This time of night... or morning... she didn’t dare bother him. But in a few hours, she’d find out what the hell was going on with the real prop of the necklace.

Dropping the stone into a black velvet bag, she hid it in her bedroom, and ambled back out to the living room to try to relax — so hard for her to get to sleep after a score...

To Max’s surprise, Kendra was sitting on the couch now, watching TV.

“What’s up?” Max asked.

Kendra gave her roommate a coy smile. “Just got home. Had a date.”

“Really?” Max sat beside her, gave her sly look. “Nice guy?”

Kendra’s smile widened. “No, he was a bad, bad boy... in a nice, nice way.”

They laughed at that, perhaps a little too much — what with Kendra a little drunk, and Max trapped in wide-awake exhaustion.

“Details,” ordered Max, “details.”

“No way.”

“I would tell you. ”

Her mouth open wide in mock astonishment, Kendra said, “You would not, and we both know it — you are the most secretive little bee-atch on the planet... and you’re pumping me for details?”

“ I wasn’t pumping you,” Max said with a laugh. “What I want to know is, who was pumping you?”

“Oh, you’re wicked...”

They were interrupted by the distracting white noise of TV static; both young women quickly recognized what this signaled, and their conversation ceased as they gave their attention to the cool yet intense eyes on the screen, eyes bordered above and below by blue, with the words STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO gliding in white letters against a red background.

“Do not attempt to adjust your set,” the calm yet intense voice intoned, making the same introduction as before, a sixty-second untraceable cable hack from the only free voice in the city.