Rogue Commander, Leo Maloney [classic books for 11 year olds TXT] 📗

Lieutenant Honesdale appeared to her right, holding his coffee cup and snarling down at her. “You don’t work for The Mandible, miss—which would be impossible anyway, since the last issue was published a year ago.”

“Honesdale,” Margolis snapped. “Go get security.”

Shit. Alex’s mind raced through her options, which were few. She saw Honesdale nodding, and she felt Margolis’s grip tightening, so she reached out and slapped the bottom of Honesdale’s cup. It sent a shower of steaming black coffee all over his crotch.

“Goddamn it!” he yelled and jumped back.

Alex jerked her arm from Margolis and took off. She sprinted down the closest display aisle as heads snapped around, and she heard a shout from behind. Then she took a hard right.

Thankfully, she hadn’t forgotten to note where all the emergency exits were, and she pounded her way through a craft services area and a slew of round tables with men wolfing hot dogs. Using them as cover, she charged toward the restrooms but took a hard left away from them—exploding through a barred exit door as an alarm went off.

She didn’t stop running for three blocks, even in the low heels, until she spotted a Tampa cab, jumped in, and panted to the driver, “Get me out of here! Some homeless dude’s been chasing me, and I’m scared!”

“Where to?” The driver hit the gas and took off.

“Busch Gardens. Hotel Nine.” She scoured the area out every window in the taxi, and waited for a full block before she slumped down in the back seat and cursed herself.

Dumbass. What the hell had she expected to get out of Margolis? Some babbling confession from a hard-ass combat leader? “Oh, yes, I’m trying to blackball that hero James Collins and ruin his life!” Now she couldn’t even go to the airport. She’d have to grab her stuff, take a bus somewhere else, and then fly back from there. She was nothing but a total freaking amateur.

She looked around at the back of the taxi, both sides of the leather seat. Her cardigan. She’d lost it somewhere. Her phony student ID was in one of the pockets, with a really nice picture of her face on it. She smacked herself on the forehead.

The cab filled with flashing red lights, the driver muttered, “Sorry, lady,” and pulled to the curb. Alex heard doors slam, and a pair of cops appeared on both sides, hands on their pistols. Then a big black Suburban zoomed past the taxi and screeched to a halt right in front. The passenger door opened and General Margolis got out. Alex rolled her eyes.

“Dad’s gonna hate this,” she moaned.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I hate having to call you like this, Scott.”

Scott Renard stood in the gleaming kitchen of his labyrinthine house. Early-morning sunlight glinted off the brushed-steel appliances, and the coffee mug he’d been raising to his lips was now frozen in mid-gesture. His cell phone was docked, and everything was wired for Bluetooth, so the disembodied voice of Lincoln Shepard echoed in the room like a call from Olympus.

“It’s about Lily, isn’t it?” Renard’s stomach muscles tightened, and he saw the creamy surface of his latte trembling. “Just tell me.”

“She’s missing.”

Renard put the cup down on the granite counter and then sat heavily on a stool—his blond head hanging as he sucked in a long breath. It was the call he’d begun to fear, and the reason he’d tried so hard to get her to give up this deadly game.

But then the tech genius part of his brain took over, as if his id had flicked a switch.

“Missing where, how and when? Just give it to me, Linc. All of it.”

Shepard realized why Renard had gone from being a college kid to a billionaire in less than a year. When he spoke, Linc felt compelled to reply. “She was on a mission in Beijing,” said Shepard. “It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance thing, but her cover got blown, and they arrested her.”

“Jesus, Linc.” Renard shut his eyes and rubbed his thumb over the deep crease between his eyebrows. He was half-dressed for work, wearing skinny black jeans, running shoes, and an “SR7” T-shirt. The initials were his, along with his lucky number. “Couldn’t care less about the details of the mission. Couldn’t care more about the details of the arrest. Let’s have them.”

Once more, Shepard was impressed by the man’s concentration and thinking process. Automatically trying to regain his mental balance, he blurted out, “Aren’t you going to ask if we’re in negotiation with the Chinese?”

“You wouldn’t call me to report a special girlfriend news bulletin,” Renard snapped but not unkindly. “If you’re calling me, it’s for some IT beyond the call of your duty and ability, right? and by the way, this line’s secure.”

Renard gave Shepard time to blink and gape on the other end of the automatically secured line. He was used to that by now. It was just a hint of his company’s superior capabilities.

“R-right,” Shepard admitted, gulping. “This is extra-governmental, Scott. And it’s worse than that. They’ve destroyed her ear comm but not her cell. My guess is she won’t give them access, so I’ve been able to track that till now. She’s moving fast. I think on a flight to Pyongyang.”

Renard rose from the stool and gripped the counter, his fingers pale. “Are you kidding me? North Korea?”

“That’s our assumption. We’re fairly sure her cover was blown by a North Korean.”

Renard banged a fist on the counter. “North...Korea. Hold on, hold on, let me get my brain around this. North...Korea. . . Wait a minute. You said she was on a plane? Now?”

Shepard was taken aback. “What? What do you mean?”

“Is she still on the plane, or is she in the bowels of some North Korean prison?”

“On the plane. She’s still in transit...”

Renard was moving as fast as his namesake—it was French for fox—in both mind and body. As he raced toward his study, his fingers were already twitching in remarkable patterns. “I