The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) by Gregg Loomis Page A

went out the door, Lang was conscious of the black fur ball that was Grumps. The dog’s resentment at being left alone would be replaced by joyous tail-wagging upon their return, particularly if a tasty morsel personally wrapped in foil by the head chef was tendered as a peace offering.
    They had just stepped out from under the building’s porte cochere when a streak of lighting split the night, followed by a roll of thunder that Lang could have sworn made the ground tremble.
    Gurt gazed up. “I think your beautiful evening may not be so good. I think perhaps we will swim to the restaurant.”
    As though staged, the skies opened with the comment, drenching Lang. Gurt had ducked back under shelter.
    “Shit!” Lang stepped back also. Although exposed to the downpour for only a second, he looked as though he had just gotten out of a bath with all his clothes on. He reached into a pocket and handed Gurt car keys. “Have ‘em bring up the Porsche while I change.”
    Lang customarily parked and retrieved his own car. The temptation for the young carhops to test the acceleration of the Porsche was too great. Lang had heard the protesting squeal of tires as the accelerator of some other resident’s auto was pushed to the firewall. Tonight, he’d take a chance. A glance at his watch told him theywere already late, and he knew the restaurant’s popularity made it difficult for them to hold reservations.
    He stood in front of the bank of elevators, shivering from the lobby’s aggressive air-conditioning. There was a dull thud and the building shuddered, lights blinking off before the condominium’s generators cut on. For a second, Lang assumed lightning had struck. Then he heard screams from outside.
    Instinctively, he ran for the doors through which he had just entered. He was so intent on looking for Gurt that it took him a second and third step to realize he was walking on a carpet of shattered glass. A woman was leaning against a dark car, a Mercedes, weeping uncontrollably, and there was the smell of something other than the ozone odor of a close lightning strike.
    Still not seeing Gurt, Lang’s eyes followed a number of people running from his right to left, toward the parking lot and underground-parking entrance. A small crowd had gathered around flames that seemed to be fueled, rather than extinguished, by the sheets of rain—rain Lang no longer noticed. Another flash of lightning showed Gurt, a head above most of the others, silhouetted by the fire.
    Lang was running, his sense of smell telling him there was a scent that had no rational reason to be here, a mixture of transmission fluid, plastic, and rubber.
    And burned nitrogen sulfate.
    He stopped beside Gurt, at first unsure of what he was seeing. A flaming mass of twisted steel sat on four wheel rims, resembling newsreel footage of Baghdad. Mercifully, whatever was left of the carhop was so burned, so disfigured, that it was indistinguishable from the charred remains of the car. Only by looking closer, seeing the tiny shields imprinted on the wheels, was Lang able to tell that he was looking at what had been a Porsche.
    His Porsche.
    The Porsche he had always parked and fetched himself.
    The Porsche he was supposed to have been in when it blew up.
    Without turning around, Gurt slipped an arm around his waist. “They are perhaps back?”
    “They” could only mean Pegasus, the international criminal cartel Lang had encountered.
    “I don’t think so,” he said quietly, unable to tear his eyes away from flames that were beginning to diminish as they exhausted the supply of fuel. “They know if anything happens to me, they’ll be exposed.”
    It was the agreement with the devil he had made a year ago. Revelation of Pegasus’s secret would have destroyed the organization, but it also would have destroyed a great number of innocents. Extortion to fund a foundation honoring two of its victims had seemed the only reasonable compromise.
    The wail of emergency