Fatal Strike by Shannon McKenna

colleague, whose face had gone purple. Chrisholm’s eyes popped. Sweat and saliva plopped down, spattering, marring the perfect sunlit swathe of fine-grained wood.
    Silva got up, walked stiffly to the French doors that led onto the terrace. It overlooked a deep canyon. A plunge of three hundred feet onto jagged rocks and trees. He opened it. “Sir, please. We only—”
    “Would you like to take his place?” Greaves’ voice was only mildly curious. “I could switch the two of you out. If you preferred.”
    “I . . . I . . .” Silva plucked at his collar, blinking frantically.
    “I thought not,” Greaves murmured.
    Chrisholm’s twitching form floated to the back of the room, then sped forward as if flung from a catapult. Out the open window, over the railing. Legs scissoring madly.
    Cold wind swirled into the room, making Lewis’s notes fly up into the air. Lewis groped for them. Paper crinkled in the silence.
    Greaves contemplated the open window, saddened. But a leader could not hesitate when an unpleasant task had to be done.
    He made a gesture toward the window, and the presumed mess below. “Deal with that,” he said, and turned his gaze on Anabel and Hu. “Bring me the girl. I’m ready for her now.”
     
    Lara sat on her cot, crosslegged in the dark, in a state of profound concentration. Today, her coping technique was a mental walk through room after room in the Uffizi, the art museum in Florence, looking at the works of the great Italian masters. She’d paused at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus , dredging up every remembered detail when lights jolted on.
    Anabel and Hu burst in, as if propelled. She had to scramble to keep her feet beneath her when they yanked her into the corridor.
    Something was up. Something different, big. They hustled right on past the usual torture chamber and into the tiny elevator. Lara’s eyes skittered away from her reflection on the metallic wall. That hollow-eyed girl with the big snarl of dark hair could not be her.
    The elevator rose two floors, and opened onto a different world. The place they kept her was dank, ugly. Stained concrete floors, cinder block walls, exposed insulation. This floor was plush. Bland, neutral colors, like a luxury hotel. Hu opened a door. Her eyes stung, dazzled.
    She’d been sitting in pitch darkness ever since the last drug trip, breathing stale, fetid air. In here, cool air swirled, smelling of trees, earth, sky, sun. French doors were flung wide, to the same view she got from her chain-link hole. The horned hill. She stared at it hungrily as she sucked in lungfuls of scented air, and sensed a person behind her.
    She turned. The man had positioned himself in a ray of sunlight. His snow-white hair glowed like a halo. He wore a white shirt, perfectly pressed gray trousers. His teeth were insanely bright. He hurt her eyes.
    Behind her, a server scurried in with a tray. The rich, buttery smell assaulted her nose. Anabel and Hu kept pulling, but her feet were rooted to the ground. They yanked. She thudded to her knees.
    “Anabel,” the man chided, his voice velvety and deep. “No need to be rough.”
    Lara struggled up, onto wobbling legs. “Who the hell are you?”
    Whack . Anabel hit the back of her head, knocking her onto her knees again. “Speak when you’re spoken to, you snotty bitch.”
    “Anabel, that will do. Go stand next to the door.”
    “Sir, be careful,” Anabel told him. “She’s unpredictable. Just two weeks ago, she bit Hu’s hand when we were—”
    “Do you really think that I need protection?” His voice was gentle, but Anabel gasped and stumbled hastily back, clutching her throat.
    He turned to her. “Lara. So glad to meet you. I’ve been following your progress. Please, sit. Coffee? Some scones?”
    Progress? Scones? She gaped at his angelic smile, his beckoning hand. “Your timing’s off,” she said. “After all this time sitting in a hole, your good cop/bad cop routine is not going to work with