“Sydney . . . ?” Griffin called out, as he backed up with the others. “Don’t.”
“He deserves it, Griff.” She shoved the remote right up to Parks’s face, pressed the button, then ran toward Griffin. The timer flashed red, counting down the seconds.
Parks went wild, throwing himself against the car door. It held fast. The three officers looked on in disbelief, then dove to the ground.
Crack!
The tire blew.
The ensuing silence was almost as deafening as the gunshot from Sydney’s AR–15. Parks stilled in his seat, looking shocked that he was alive.
Sydney walked up, leaned toward the window. “Huh. Guess you were right. Detonator wasn’t connected.” And then she gave a pointed look at the growing wet stain on his khaki pants. “But who smells like piss now?”
The Border Patrol arrived to take custody of the officers, and were soon joined by the various alphabet agencies, all interested in the gunrunning that Parks was involved in. Griffin and Sydney gave a brief statement of their involvement. And contrary to Chief Parks’s accusation, no one was trying to kill him. The discharge of the weapon that took out the patrol car tire? Purely accidental.
Finally they were allowed to leave. As Griffin and Sydney walked toward the car still parked out by the gulch, she reached out, gave him a quick hug. “That was actually fun.”
“Not bad for a day’s work.”
“Too bad we have to fly back for debriefing. I was looking forward to a nice quiet weekend. Just you and me . . .”
“Same here,” he said, though he wasn’t being entirely truthful. He looked over at her, wishing he could just come right out and say what he had to say. Some secrets were never meant to be divulged, and this was one. Even so, until he told her, there could never be anything between them. And if he did tell her? He knew without a doubt she’d leave. Never look back.
The laughter left her eyes as she studied his face, apparently sensing his struggle. “So . . . what was it you wanted to talk to me about? We’ve got a few minutes before that helicopter gets here.”
“It can wait,” he said, hoping he wasn’t making the mistake of his life.
They walked in silence a few minutes, and then she linked her arm through his, her face lighting up once more. “God, I wish I had a photo of his face when I shot out that tire.”
He looked over at her and smiled. “Priceless.”
CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF SYDNEY FITZPATRICK AND ZACHARY GRIFFIN?
HERE’S WHAT’S COMING NEXT . . .
What you don’t know can kill you . . . FBI Special Agent Sydney Fitzpatrick knows nothing about the Devil’s Key, except that her father was murdered over it and she now has a copy. The Devil’s Key, a list of seemingly random, supposedly indecipherable numbers, poses an immediate threat to national security—and anyone caught in possession of this code is terminated with extreme prejudice.
What you do know can kill you . . . But Sydney’s not the only one in danger. When a young woman with eidetic memory sees the numbers, Sydney and her partner Zachary Griffin must protect her—and what she knows—at all costs. For if the code falls into enemy hands, it could devastate the entire country’s infrastructure—and even ignite a world war.
HERE IS A SNEAK PREVIEW OF
THE KILL ORDER
by Robin Burcell
COMING SOON FROM HARPER
AN IMPRINT OF HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
Chapter 1
South San Francisco, California
Piper Lawrence eyed the cigarettes in the pocket of the man sitting next to her on the bus. She’d given up smoking a year ago, because she couldn’t afford it and community college. Or anything else for that matter. Books cost a fortune. Food wasn’t exactly cheap, either. But sometimes people tucked money in their packs—she used to. Besides, pickpocketing kept her skills sharp, and in this case it wasn’t really going to harm anyone.
Her stop was coming up, and she waited for the bounce that always occurred as the bus crossed this particular intersection . . . Then, “Sorry,” she said, accidentally bumping into the man as she rose from her seat. She moved toward the front, holding on to the handrail. As the bus slowed, then stopped, she hurried down the steps, and the door swished closed behind her, sending a slight gust of air at her back as the bus took off.
The cigarette pack felt slightly heavier than it should, and she was curious, but figured it wasn’t wise to open it there, in case the guy discovered it missing too soon. She quickened her pace, turned the corner, and walked the two blocks to her destination, a small business park filled with warehouses, most subdivided into small shops. It was located in the city of South San Francisco, on the east side of Highway 101. Her friend’s shop wasn’t in the nicest of areas, but this time of night it was quiet.
About to open the pack, she hesitated when she saw a black sedan parked near the corner. The streetlamp cast just enough light for her to see two men sitting in the front seat, and a third man with gray hair standing at their open window. Apparently the conversation had concluded, and he started to walk away, but the driver called him back, saying, “Hey, Brooks.” The man returned to the car.
The vehicle faced the direction she was headed, and she couldn’t see the two men he was talking to, or hear what they were saying. For a moment, though, she thought this Brooks guy was the gray-haired man from the bus, waiting with undercover detectives to arrest her for pickpocketing. Then again, she’d been in the back of a few cop cars. Around here they drove those big Fords, she thought as the gray-haired man turned, looked right at her. She realized then that he was not the same person at all, and she chided herself.
How stupid to think they’d send out detectives over a pack of smokes, and she wondered why these men were here at all. This time of night, everything in the area was closed.
Drugs? Probably not. They didn’t look the type.
Since none of them seemed interested in her, she ignored them, crossed the street, and opened the cigarette pack, thereby discovering it contained a few cigarettes and a lighter, which was probably why it felt heavy.
Waste of talent, she thought, then pushed open the door of her friend Bo Brewer’s shop. Bo fixed things for a living. Today it was copy machines. Tomorrow it would be something else, depending on what he bought from the government surplus auctions. In the most recent lot, he’d purchased seven copy machines, all the same model, all in various states of repair. The fact he was able to buy perfectly good office equipment for so cheap was, in his opinion, why the government was broke. He’d quickly fixed two machines by swapping out parts, estimating that he could sell the pair for what he’d paid for the lot, which meant that he’d already recouped his investment.
Bo looked up as she walked in. “Hey,” he said, then bent back down over his keyboard, typing something into his computer.
“You realize there’s two guys sitting in a car out there? Some guy talking to them. Kind of strange, don’t you think?”
“Saw it there earlier. Probably the cops. I think the auto repair shop next door is dealing in stolen car parts.”