Chapter 23

An angry buzzing—like an alarm waking you to a hangover—built in Justice’s head. It was thick with memories and pain and hatred.

“Care to join us?” Aamir grinned at Justice with his oh-so-slick smile, his can’t-be-stopped surety, his nothing-you-can-do-about-it cockiness seeping from the pores of his skin that mocked Hope’s life. Justice adjusted the sharp thread of metal.

Not for nothing, as Tony would say. She stepped forward. He spread his arms out. Another invitation? She had no idea. She slammed the sharp wire up and through Aamir’s ribs. It pierced him like a dart. He jerked taller, as if someone had just woken him the fuck up.

Not enough. She smashed the pod into his mouth. He spit it out. But that much concentrated poison caused an instant reaction. Foam spilled from his lips as he lurched backward and fell halfway between the bedroom and bathroom. His head thudded against the marble bathroom floor with a wet slap.

Justice carefully rolled off the gloves and shoved them into the sealed pocket inside her vest.

The girl screamed. In warning. Or fear. Either way, it served as warning.

Justice pivoted and snapped a roundhouse against the guard’s neck. He staggered right.

She stepped forward, fisted his shirt, and kneed him in the balls. He tucked tail, dropped to his knees. She bent and grabbed his sidearm. Silencer. Nice. His eyes widened, hands came up. She smashed the gun against his skull, hard enough to crack sanity. His eyes rolled back. His body gave out.

The girl screamed again.

Fuck.

Justice removed her prosthetic tongue with a jerk that made her teeth hurt. In Arabic, she instructed the girl to stop screaming.

No go.

The girl, all bony knees, elbows, and long, blond hair slick against a skeletal back ran screaming into the main living area. Justice followed.

The suite door opened. One of the two exterior guards came inside unhurriedly. Little girls screaming? Just another day at the office.

He didn’t draw his weapon until he came far enough into the room to see his boss’s body.

Too late. Justice shot him in the head. Crack. He dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She ran over and pretended to be helping him, using his big body as cover. The second guard entered with weapon drawn. His eyes locked on her.

She shot. Hit him in the leg. He caught himself on the doorframe, kept his gun raised. There was a crack and the thuck of a bullet hitting the dead guard’s back, and a split-second later, the phone in dead guard’s pocket began to play Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba.”

How typically inappropriate.

Justice crouched lower, sighted, squeezed the trigger again.

The bullet drove into the last guard’s chest. In almost a lazy, casual way—like a B-movie actor—the guard slumped against the door and slid to the floor.

Justice ran into Walid’s room, then slowly approached the girl. Since Justice’s Arabic sucked, a simple explanation would work best. “Women are fighting back. I am here to rescue you. I need you to get dressed. Fast.”

The girl swallowed. Her blue eyes filled with tears. She spoke English. “I’m Amal. I’m the one who prayed for you to come.”

* * *

With her throat tight with panic, Justice grasped the girl’s sweaty hand. Amal shook so hard the tremors in her hand felt like a mini earthquake. She squeezed tightly. Together, they moved out of the room and down the hallway.

The kid was as determined as she was scared. That made two of them. But the girl’s quick responses as she’d gotten ready and listened to the plan had given Justice a little more surety. Innocence was something only unused children got to keep.

At the end of the corridor, two hotel security guards waited by the elevators. They had their weapons out, but they were already looking past Justice. Amal did and said exactly what she was supposed to. She cried out for help, waved behind her. “The men are all dead. All dead.”

She began to sob. One of the hotel guards hustled Justice and the little girl behind them. He told her to stay and that others would come soon.

The two guards began down the hall. Justice knelt before Amal, blocked her from view, met her eyes. Justice hunched closer to the girl, tried to appear weak, small, a nonthreat to the reinforcements. The elevator dinged. Her mouth went dry. Her heart prepped for takeoff.

The elevator doors opened. She angled her head to see the men from the corner of her eye.

Not reinforcements.

Walid came out followed by two guards. The men spotted hotel security advancing and began to follow them down the hall.

They didn’t even register Justice and the girl. Or they had in some part of their brain that told them they were harmless.

Amal began to tremble. Her head and body leaned toward the open elevator.

Walid stood feet from them. Justice could shoot him. She could. Her gun was hidden. He was so close. But she’d risk Amal.

He followed his men down the hallway. The elevator began to close.

“Go.” Amal pushed Justice toward the closing elevator. “The elevator.”

Walid looked then. His eyes fell on Amal. His eyebrows rose. A few feet ahead of where he’d stopped, his guards turned too.

Justice yanked Amal by the arm and darted into the elevator, half dragging her.

The guards dove forward, dragged Walid down, covered him. One of them swung his gun toward Justice and shot. The elevator doors slid shut.

* * *

Purposely trying to mislead anyone watching the elevator numbers, Justice pressed buttons for multiple floors, but not the floor she needed. The elevator stopped. Justice and Amal walked out.

Justice picked up her pace toward the stairs. Amal followed.

Inside the stairwell, Amal didn’t complain or ask a single question. But for the sound of their footsteps echoing as they ran, she was almost spookily silent. Two floors up, they exited and moved quickly down the hall.

Justice struggled to remember her training. That was bad. Training should just kick in—like coughing when you’d swallowed water incorrectly. But that wasn’t happening. It might have something to do with being shot. The ache in her side. The pounding of her heart. The weight of the gun in her right hand. The fragile feel of Amal’s small hand grasped within her own as Justice tugged her to keep up.

They made it to the room, and she pulled out the key card. When she’d been doing recon, she’d spent a whole day arranging a room here. Leaving her hotel down the street, changing at a restaurant, then coming here in disguise with false ID and credit cards. It had seemed overkill. Now, she was glad she’d done it.

Time wasn’t on her side. They’d already be looking for her, scanning the cameras.

With a push of her hand, the room door swung open. Without a prompt, Amal slipped inside. Following, Justice closed the door and hurried to the bathroom.

The bathroom light flicked on when she entered. Wiping the blood and sweat off of her hands and onto her pants, she grabbed a towel and used it to stanch the wound on her side.

Her body was tense with adrenaline. Her mind racing. Digging the tips of her nails under the wire in her mouth, she yanked off the last piece of metal from her teeth. It gave way with a pop. She ran her tongue over her teeth, tasted blood.

Inside the hotel room, she found the suitcase she’d brought.

It contained three airtight packages and clothes, but nothing that could be tied to her. Except the locket Cooper had given her, which she quickly put over her head. With the last bit of metal pinched between her fingers, she pierced each of the three packages.

Air entered and they expanded. Amal gave a small squeak of surprise. Justice told her it was okay and pulled the plastic away. A noxious chemical smell filled the room as the sponges expanded more.

Two of the sponges in one hand, she walked to the bathroom, placed them on the sink, and stripped off her uniform. In her underwear and bra, she tore the sponges with shaking hands then tossed them, her hotel uniform including the vest, and the poison into the tub. Back at the sink, she washed her hands and hustled into the room.

The last sponge had expanded to the proper size. Good. The straps attached to this football-shaped sponge secured it to her midsection. Over this she slipped an abaya, and on her head a niqab. One pregnant Muslim. Check.

Amal watched this transformation with eyes growing larger by the minute. She probably would’ve been less stunned to see a car turn into a Transformer.

The suitcase she’d brought had a small pair of scissors. They’d do. Tossing the white bedding off the plush bed, she cut a square strip from the sheet.

“Can you make this into a niqab?”

Amal held out her hands, then went into the bathroom and did a fairly good job of it. Justice straightened it a little, tucked the sides under. Not perfect. Not with that blue dress. But it would have to do.

That done, Justice grabbed a towel and wiped down any surface she might have touched, including her suitcase. Back in the bathroom, she tossed the towel in the tub.

She stroked the wheel on a lighter she’d brought and put the flame to the flammable gel padding. It went up with a whoosh. She threw in the lighter. The material would burn to ash quickly, so it wasn’t a danger to the guests, but it would destroy the evidence and create enough smoke to set off the fire alarm.

Her heart fluttering in her chest like a bird against a cage, Justice grasped Amal’s hand and kept her other hand holding the gun within the sleeve of her abaya.

She gave final instructions to Amal. “When the alarm goes off, we head out, down the stairs, and out the front door with the other people.”

The fire alarm sounded.