around the corrugated-plastic grip. Her thumb went to the safety to flick it off. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Dana barked, following the training that told her to keep her voice even but still speaking harshly enough to display control. You could never show fear to your adversary. That would only reinforce their confidence and encourage them to attack. ‘You’d better start making sense or I’m going to arrest you right now. Tell me how you know these things about me.’
The woman dressed in black smiled and produced a syringe loaded with a clear liquid. Dana slid out the Glock from her shoulder holster as the woman took a step forward, pointing it directly at her head. ‘Stop right there,’ Dana ordered, both her hands and voice perfectly steady now. ‘Just stop right there or I’ll put a bullet in your fucking brain.’
But the woman didn’t stop.
Dana lowered the gun and pulled the trigger once, aiming for the woman’s kneecap, just like she’d done with her half-brother in his underground bunker two years earlier. A warning shot meant to drive home the painful reminder that the predators weren’t in charge here. The good guys were.
But the gun only clicked dryly.
Dana stared down at the Glock in her hand. She shook her head and pulled the trigger again, praying that a particle of dust had somehow caused a temporary malfunction. Again, nothing happened.
The woman in black widened the smile on her pretty face, showing off two rows of perfectly white teeth. Without warning, she shot out a hand and grabbed Dana hard by her throat, squeezing forcefully enough to cut off Dana’s air. The power in the woman’s grip was unbelievable, unladylike, to say the least, nearly inhuman.
Pain like a scorpion’s sting bit deep into Dana’s flesh as the woman jabbed the sharp needle into her throbbing carotid artery, producing a pinching sensation that reminded Dana of the yearly influenza shots she’d received as a kid. Only then did Dana realise that the woman accosting her was the exact same woman from the one in the autopsy-room video. The woman’s hair and clothes were different now, but her eyes were the same brilliant shade of green. Sadly, though, Dana didn’t have time to process this information before her eyelids grew heavy and her world faded away again.
Through the fog in her brain, Dana heard metallic clinks that sounded like silver raindrops echo against the frozen pavement.
The woman’s last words – like all her previous words – were delivered in a voice positively dripping with contempt.
‘In case you were wondering, my dear, those men were working for me,’ the woman said, letting the remaining bullets from Dana’s gun drop from her hand and onto the hard surface of the parking lot below. ‘We took the liberty of emptying out your gun while you were passed out the first time. Anyway, like I said before, you shouldn’t thank me just yet. I may be done with you for the time being, but I’m certainly not done with you for good. I saved you only because I want you for myself, Agent Whitestone. Sweet dreams, sweetheart. I’ll be seeing you again real soon.’
The woman paused. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, ‘Better look twice, though. I know you’re supposed to be the world’s greatest cop and all, but you probably won’t recognise me the next time around.’
CHAPTER 28
Dana came to again twenty minutes later, woozy and nauseous from the effects of the powerful drug still coursing through her system.
Shaking her head hard to clear away the fresh scattering of cobwebs in her frazzled brain, Dana pulled herself up off the ground and punched 911 into her cellphone before pacing the parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office for ten solid minutes while waiting impatiently for the cops to arrive.
Dana forced herself to not cry during the interminable six hundred seconds. Wasn’t easy. Her head was killing her and her body temperature had soared to a feverish level despite the bitterly cold wind that was whipping in off the lake and knifing viciously through her traumatised body. Still, the bitter cold couldn’t touch her right now. Nothing in the world could touch her right now. Not today and maybe not ever again.
Dana stomped back and forth in front of her car: twenty feet forward and twenty feet back, tracing and re-tracing the same path until she’d worn a patch three feet wide into the snow. Sweat rolled down her temples and