was the wielder of it, the master of it, and he’d dealt it hard and fast in Bangkok when they’d come for him with their black needles in their hands.
They’d made a warrior. What had they thought, that he’d let them kill him? Fools.
A bus went by, its lights unnaturally bright, and Monk turned away, pulling the hood of his jacket closer around his face. He could see clearly to the horizon in all directions in the dark, which was yet one more way Dr. Patterson had overdone him. Light bothered him. Flashing lights blinded him and gave him actual, piercing pain. Flashing lights of any duration were agonizing, like bullets to his brain. He’d found pills in the lab to help, silver gelcaps the color of his eyes, except his irises were even paler than silver, albino eyes. Before Bangkok his eyes had been dark gray and his hair sandy brown. Patterson’s drugs had changed him.
Lancaster—the name ran through his blood, his master.
Monk had tracked him easily. There had been invoices by the dozens to a company named LeedTech and a connection of Lancaster to LeedTech in the lab’s computer files. Men of vision and power were easy to track. Farrel, the mud-sucking worm, had been much harder. If Monk hadn’t been following Lancaster so closely, watching his every move, monitoring his every call, using every piece of technology he could find and every ounce of his intelligence, he might not have ever found the man Lancaster needed destroyed.
The gift he was going to give.
He took a deep breath. The air was thin, a mile high and lacking in oxygen, not like the rich brew of the Thai lowlands, but it would suffice.
A lot of men had died trying to capture or kill Conroy Farrel. Monk knew he would not, for a very simple reason. There’d never been anyone like him.
Never.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Buckle up.
That had been a great idea, and Jane was duly grateful for the advice.
Staying in the car when he’d offered to let her out at the Quick Mart?
Not such a great idea.
What in the world had she been thinking?
All the wrong things was the answer to that. Cripes.
And her knee hurt like hell, and she’d gotten blood on her dress. Dammit.
She jerked the seat belt across her lap tighter with one hand while hugging her zebra purse closer to her chest with the other. Corinna probably didn’t have air bags, and the way they were careening around corners made Jane pretty damn sure she was going to need one. She felt like she was in the middle of a carnival ride in the middle of downtown Denver, like the whirling teacup ride, where there were lots of other teacups, all of them going round and round without ever getting any closer to each other.
Hawkins was in the green teacup, also known as the mighty Roxanne. Travis was at the wheel of the gold teacup, Coralie, with Gillian “Red Dog” Pentycote riding shotgun—and Jane meant that literally—and she and J.T. were in the midnight-blue teacup.
And the last thing the party needed was another teacup weighing in for the ride, but that’s exactly what they got on the west side, at the corner of 30th and Vallejo: Creed and his Super Sport 454 Chevelle, Angelina.
Jane didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more unnerved. One way or another, this chase was coming to an end, and with the addition of Creed, it was going to be sooner rather than later. She just prayed it wasn’t going to be a bad end for any of them. They were being herded God only knew where by the Steele Street crew, who were obviously communicating with one another.
They’d tried communicating with J.T., as well, but apparently he was one of those guys who felt safer off the grid. When a small computer screen had soundlessly slid out of the GTO’s tape deck showing their location on a map of Denver, he’d barely taken a look before calmly reaching over and ripping the unit out of the dashboard.
That had gotten her attention, the quickness of the decision, the ease of the execution, the strength of his hand, even with him missing half of his ring finger, and, God, she didn’t want to think about how that had happened to him, the same way she could hardly bear to look at his scars and accept what had been done to him.
The crumpled GPS/computer unit was now sitting in the backseat, a crunched-up mess