***
Evgeny’s instructions had been clear. The contract had arrived suddenly by mail, right after he’d mailed Jayde and me about his team’s recon.
A well-heeled new client wanted to meet with the Archivist, the same man he’d just help track down, and he was to set up the meeting in person.
It hadn’t taken his contacts long to track the archivist to the Kobe Travel Station. And the 12th floor heat signature was insane. He wondered how Dregba had managed to stay alive for so long.
He got into the lobby elevator with three guests, but they each disembarked at other levels, and by the time he reached the Archivist’s floor, he was alone in the elevator.
The doors slid open … and revealed a minor-league bloodbath.
The heat signatures that had been so active just a few floors earlier were now quite inert, each put down with a single bullet.
Professional, recent. Better keep my head up, Evgeny thought, drawing his gun from the holster just behind his right hip.
He made his way slowly past the dead guards, shoulder to the wall closest to the Archivist’s room.
The door was at the end of the hallway, and open a crack.
He peered through, and could make out what looked like woman lying unconscious, plus a little of the empty room. A man was talking but he couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Phht. Krommp. Unmistakable, a silenced shot, followed by someone collapsing.
He edged his way into the room quickly-but-quietly. The woman was young, perhaps 22 or 23, coppery red hair up in a bun and a business suit on. Breathing, but unconscious.
Evgeny wasn’t a kid anymore but his instincts were still sound. He almost “heard” the punch, the feeling of the air rushing past his face as he bobbed backwards slightly instinctively.
Female, lithe, all black, mask, try a quick elbow strike to the temple, no, blocked, try a half-palm fist to the jaw….
The assassin was fast and wiry, and she stepped around Evgeny’s attacks easily. Her first punch was behind his knee, dropping him down to one, her second, with the butt of her pistol in hand adding weight and power, caught him in the base of the skull, slamming him to the ground, barely conscious.
He saw a glimpse of black boots as she walked out of the hotel room ... right before he blacked out. Fuck. This is why I stay online.