The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

a tight pattern. Kaglan screamed and went down. He managed to return fire, but his aim was all over the place, most of his shots missing the opening and cratering the windows beyond it. The SIG shooter stepped away from the opening on the far side until Kaglan ran dry, and then the weapon came back through the hole and began rapid-firing blindly into the room.
    Finn threw himself flat and crawled behind the couch, for whatever cover it could provide. He heard the SIG fire dry, and it crossed his mind to get up and hit the off button on the cylinder, but already he heard the metallic scrape of the SIG’s magazine dropping out, and almost on top of it came the smack of a fresh one being rammed home. Half a breath after that the shooting started again, fast and wild, hitting everything. Finn counted seven shots. Then silence. Which was strange: a SIG 220’s clip held eight rounds. He glanced up and saw Kaglan struggling to move, blood seeping heavily from a wound in his side. And then the eighth shot hit Kaglan in the temple and took the top half of his head off.
    Finn vaulted to his feet and threw himself toward the walnut table and the black cylinder. The reload would have to be slower this time—the shooter would have to fish in his pockets for another magazine, if he had one. In the split-second before he slammed his thumb down onto the off button, Finn raised his eyes and caught a glimpse of the opening. The shooter had stepped aside again, but the woman, Paige Campbell, was just visible, crouching low on the narrow beam. Her eyes found Finn’s at the exact instant he hit the button, and as the circle shrank to nothing, the last thing he saw through it was her hand coming up—and giving him the finger.

Chapter Twenty
    They ran until they reached the skeleton of the Ritz-Carlton. They stopped then, and turned, and the three of them watched the avenue to the south. Watched the framework of the highrise, what they could see of it past the birches. Watched for the telltale burst of sunlight that would give away the opening of the other iris—from the cylinder Finn still possessed. It never came.
    They climbed the oak to the Ritz’s third floor girders. Bethany switched on their own cylinder, and thirty seconds later they were inside the hotel room, in the present, standing at the windows and looking south at the highrise in the summer sun.
    No unusual activity there. No one rushing in or out. No police response. Travis wasn’t surprised—dialing 9–1–1 was probably not the standard procedure for emergencies in that building.
    He saw Paige turn toward him. He looked at her. They were both still catching their breath from the run. Travis saw some kind of conflict in her expression. Like part of her couldn’t believe what’d just happened, and another part wasn’t surprised at all. After a second she just shook her head. She put one arm over Bethany’s shoulder, the other over Travis’s, dragged them together and squeezed them tightly. They stood that way, saying nothing, for over a minute.
    Paige used Bethany’s phone, encrypted against a physical trace, to call Border Town. She set it to speaker mode. A woman answered on the second ring.
    “Bethany?”
    “It’s Paige, Evelyn.”
    Travis heard a sharp exhalation on the other end, a mix of surprise and relief. Then a silence.
    “Are the others with you?” Evelyn said.
    Paige closed her eyes. “No. They’re gone.”
    The line stayed quiet for several seconds.
    “Bethany told me there’s a blockade in effect around Border Town,” Paige said.
    “Yes. Fighter jets. So far they’re staying outside the boundary.”
    “Has there been any contact from the president?”
    “No. No contact from anyone.”
    Paige thought about it. Nodded to herself. “All right.”
    “What’s happening, Paige? What’s all this about?”
    “I wish I had time to explain it, but I just don’t. I need to go somewhere. When this is over with, I’ll tell you everything.”
    “One question, then,” Evelyn said.
    “Sure.”
    “If there’s a move against us by the military, and we can’t stop it… do you want us to use the fallback option?”
    Paige breathed out slowly. She paced a few steps.
    Travis looked at Bethany and spoke quietly. “Fallback option?”
    Bethany could only shrug.
    Paige stopped pacing. “No,” she said. “Not if it’s the U.S. military. Do not use the fallback option.”
    “I understand,” Evelyn said. Travis thought he heard another