PROLOGUE
October
8–12: 42 P.M.
Paris,France
“ This is
it?”
“ We thought
you’d like to see a familiar face,” her childhood friend said. His bright cricket smile flashed across his
face.
“ Well,they
got it wrong in Catholic School.”
His top hat
bounced on his head when he nodded.
Adjusting his ascot,he held a white-gloved hand out to her.
“ Take my
hand.”
“ What about
the others?” She pulled her hand to her chest.
“ Don’t you have to take them first?”
“ Except for
one,they have moved on,” he said. “ It’s
your time.”
“ I think
I’ll stay here.”
Jiminy
Cricket’s head fell back in laughter. The buttons on his vest strained against the
gale.
“ I am
thirty years old,” she said through her teeth. “ I am a Special Forces Intelligence Officer. I am a Sergeant in the United States Army. They call me the Fey. My name is….”
The lights
came on. The cricket faded.
She was
sitting cross-legged with her best friend’s head in her lap. Touching his face,she confirmed what she
already knew. Sergeant Jesse Abreu was
dead. She collapsed back against the
door to the limestone vault. She would
join him soon.
Her heart
jumped. There was movement to inside the
vault. Someone survived! Shifting her
torso toward the vault,Jesse’s head ground further into the gaping wounds in
her left hip. She clamped her mouth shut
against the scream forming in her
throat.
Overwhelmed
with pain,her focus slipped. The
cricket’s smiling face came into view. She
screwed up her face and squinted her eyes.
She was not
dying.
Not yet.
Her beloved
childhood friend laughed and fanned her with his umbrella.
She was
sitting in the doorway again.
“ I wondered
if you were alive,” a slight dark-haired man said in Arabic. “ Don’t move.”
Pressing the
muzzle of a handgun against her forehead,he kneeled in front of her. His hand reached under her jacket. Pulling her dog tags from under her T-shirt,he
jerked the secondary tag from the longer chain.
“ From the
look of things,you’ll be dead soon enough.”
He rummaged
through Jesse’s shirt ripping his secondary dog tag from its chain. The man held eleven dog tags in front of her
face.
“ You’re
quite valuable.” Holstering the handgun,he stood and looked back into the
vault.
“ Now,where can I find that
security token? No token,no payment.”
“ Gosh,I
wish I could help you.” She replied in Hebrew knowing it would make him angry. She opened and closed her eyes in an attempt
to bat her large brown eyes.
“ Yes,fuck
me.” The man sneered then kicked Jesse’s dead body. Continuing in Arabic,he said,“ I’m not the one
who is fucked. You should be grateful. Death is preferable to what is planned for
you. Just give me the token,and we’re
even.”
She glowered
at him. Under Jesse’s body,she slipped
her hand into her pocket to find her Zippo lighter.
“ No matter.
You’ll be dead in a few minutes.”
journal from inside her jacket. Tucking the journal deep into the front pocket
of Jesse’s shirt,she sagged forward.
“ Nice try,Fey. I have the token.” The man bent and kissed
her cheek. “ Thanks. With this,I can afford that house in the South
of France.”
The man’s expression turned to disgust when he noticed he
was holding a St. Christopher medallion on a secondary dog
tag. Spitting on the medallion,he threw it into the
pool of blood forming around her. She
grabbed for the St. Christopher,the only
gift Jesse ever received from his mother. With his foot,he moved the medallion just out
of her reach and smirked at her.
“ I am sorry. I did
like your team…and you.”
“ If you like me so much,why not just kill me now?” she
asked in Hebrew.
“ I am not a killer. I
am merely a business man.”
“ You hire people to do your killing. You must have known that I would kill him.”
“ In fact,I predicted that if we left you alive,you would
kill our associate. But you were to be
left alive.” He shrugged as if to say that the shooter’s death was a reasonable
business expense. Looking into the
vault,he said,“ Did you have to shoot him in the head? So messy.”
Pulling a neck gaiter up over his mouth and nose,the man
retreated into the blood-drenched vault. He glanced around the vault,and then began
rummaging through a stack of clean clothing. Finding what he needed,he wrapped the
shooter’s head with T-shirts.
The man jerked to a stop.
Footsteps in the hallway!
Through drooping eyes,she watched him press into a dark
corner of the vault.
“ Take my hand,” Jiminy Cricket said. “ It is time.”
She took the gloved hand and looked into the cricket’s
beloved face.
“ Can we sing?” she asked.
“ Of course,” her cricket began singing her favorite song,“ When
you wish upon a star.”
They sang as they rose through five floors of limestone
tunnels and into the building above. They
were floating through the bright fall Paris day when a male voice joined in
their song.
“ Max,” she whispered the name of her identical twin.
A strong deep voice,with a distinctive London accent,joined
the song.
“ John,” she whispered her husband’s name.
Like a beacon,their voices called her home.
Turning to Jiminy Cricket,she let go of his hand. With death on her tail,she dove back to the
pain. She leapt toward the horror. She pushed her spirit back into her broken
body.
Feeling a brush across her lips,Alexandra “ The Fey”
Hargreaves opened her eyes.
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