Reckoning. Jo Leigh

dark. It was one of the many ram-shackle buildings in the projects of East Los Angeles that had once housed the poor. Even they’d moved on, except for those too whacked-out on drugs or alcohol, or who thought they could still make a buck. Mostly rats lived there. Rats and packs of dogs.

      He could see now—shapes at least. There were almost no working street lights here. The city had stopped replacing them. Which made it an excellent hiding space, but damned hard to negotiate without a flashlight.

      One thing in his favor, and hopefully Tam’s, was that they’d gone over this route over and over again. He’d wanted her to be able to find her way in the pitch-black night. He’d wanted her safe.

      IN DARKNESS SO BLACK IT FELT like blindness, Tamara Chen touched her eyes to see if they were open. The gun in her other hand shook from her trembling, making her feel useless and petrified.

      She’d just killed a man.

      He’d been alive one second and dead the next, and it didn’t seem to matter that he’d tried to kill her. She’d pulled the trigger. The recoil had knocked her against the wall of the lab and hurt her wrist, but even so she’d shot him in the head. A fluke, an accident. One that had saved her life.

      She curled her arm around her body, but it did nothing against the frigid January air. She’d left her coat. Her cell phone had been destroyed, along with her clothes, her pictures, her journals. Everything she had was now gone except the clothes she wore and the flash drive that hung on a long chain around her neck.

      The last five years of her life were stored in it, and she could go to any computer, plug it in the USB port and there it would be. Formulas, notes, test results. Failures.

      The last two weeks in the lab had been a new kind of hell for her. Nothing she’d experienced before, whether in school or at work, had prepared her for a failure of such magnitude. What in hell had made her think she could save the day? She was a biochemist. A good one. But she’d fallen so short of the mark on this one—

      A sound, the crack of a branch? A backfire in the distance? She lifted the gun again, still shaking as badly as when she’d first planted herself in the corner.

      They’d found her. Omicron had found her. They were clever bastards, but she’d been so careful. She never made phone calls, except with the clean cell phones Nate gave her. She hid in the basement lab, having her groceries and supplies brought to her rather than risk a trip to the market.

      Nothing in her life, ever since she’d returned to the States from Kosovo, had been normal. Even her Internet connection, which she used only when absolutely necessary, had been routed through so many blind alleys and foreign ports that it would take a genius months—if ever—to pinpoint her location.

      So what had gone wrong? Had they found Nate? Followed him?

      The thought filled her with a whole new level of terror. If Nate had been captured, if he was dead, then she might as well give it up. There would be no winning if Nate was out of the picture. Since day one, he’d been the leader.

      The first time she’d met him she’d been in Serbia, in a cramped lab, working on the development of a new chemical compound.

      That seemingly dream job had come to her out of the blue. She’d just finished her final doctoral thesis and had scored a plum position working for her chemistry professor, Dr. Brennan. But Brennan had introduced her to a man claiming to be working on a secret government project. He’d offered her two hundred thousand dollars for two years of work, if she was willing to relocate to Kosovo. She wasn’t told what the project was, only her part.

      While she’d known several of the other scientists who’d been approached, mostly chemists like herself, she’d had to sign a non-fraternization contract, as well as a nondisclosure agreement. One slip of the tongue, and there would be no payoff. She’d gotten a weekly per diem that took care of her necessities, and they’d provided housing, but the big money was all due upon completion. She used to spend hours at night, planning how she’d spend her two hundred grand.

      How jumping on that incredible opportunity had led her to being hunted down by a rogue CIA unit was still beyond her comprehension. Those men from Omicron had destroyed the lab, trashed her personal belongings and tried to kidnap—if not kill—her. Her. Tamara Chen. Who’d been a science nerd since grade school. Who used to look forward to music night with her Mom and Dad. Who’d gone out on her first date at eighteen. Who’d never been in love.

      She froze as another crack sounded. This time it wasn’t far away, and this time it was followed by footsteps coming closer, walking through the condemned building toward her.

      Somehow she managed to get to her feet, then she pointed the gun in front of herself. She had no idea if she was aiming at a wall or a torn-up couch, but she had to do something. She didn’t want to die, not at twenty-eight. It was the most terrified she’d ever been, and in the last few years, she’d been shaken a lot.

      She’d anxiously brooded about this moment, what it would be like to come face to face with the shadowy men of Omicron determined to kill her and her friends because of their discovery of Omicron’s deadly plans while they were stationed in Kosovo. It sucked.

      NATE MOVED MORE CAREFULLY, uncomfortably aware that if Omicron was watching, they’d be using infrared. The only way to get where he needed to go was to use the buildings themselves as cover.

      One room at a time, one wall at a time, he made his way block by block. He was getting closer, and his heart beat hard and heavy in his chest, dreading what he would find.

      He finally reached the building, the one they’d chosen as a fail-safe. She was behind that wall or she wasn’t, and he’d have to deal with it. That’s all. He could do this.

      One step, then another. The darkness here was total and there was no choice but to reach into his back pocket and take out his penlight. He looked away, turned on the thing, then followed the beam of light around the corner.

      It was Tam. Bloody, shaking so hard her weapon was all over the map and filthy, but it was Tam and she was alive.

      “Stop or I’ll shoot,” she said, her voice quavering, her eyes shut tight against the light.

      “It’s me,” Nate said, and he had to repeat it because his voice broke. “Tam, it’s me.”

      She stilled for a moment, then opened her eyes. “Nate?”

      She sounded like a child. A frightened, desperate child.

      He holstered his gun and crossed the distance between them. Gently pushing aside her weapon, he took her in his arms. “It’s okay,” he said, his words muffled on her hair. “I’m here.”

      She dropped her gun on the floor and clutched his back. He felt her sob before he heard it, her whole chest heaving against him.

      “Shh,” he said, rocking her. “Are you hurt?”

      She shook her head.

      “Can you walk?”

      A nod.

      “Okay, baby, let’s take it slowly. I want to make sure there’s no one out there.”

      She sniffed, then drew her head back. “I killed him,” she said.

      “That was good. You did great.”

      “He pointed his gun at me, but I shot first. There was no time.”

      “You did the right thing,” he said. She was freaked, and he got that. Ordinary people freaked about death. About killing. They weren’t trained for anything else. “He was a bad guy, so don’t sweat it. Right now, we have to get out of here. They could come back.”

      She hung on to him as he bent for her gun. He could feel her body tremble as he led her on a circuitous route through what was left of the building. It took a lot longer to get back to his truck than it had to get to her. They kept the light out for most of the journey, and toward the end she had slowed to a crawl, but finally they were