The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

the alarm, which he’d figured had been disabled too. What he wanted was to get to the wall and stick the paper clips, which he’d unfolded to triple their length, into the outlet.

Droon started toward him.

Still leaning against the wall, Shaw held up his hand. “Just give me a minute . . .”

Frowning, Droon paused.

Shaw pressed one paper clip into the other with the upper part of his left shoe.

The resulting spark and staccato bang, impressive, were like a firecracker detonating. Instantly the library went dark.

11

Droon and the security guards dropped into a crouch, looking around, not understanding what had happened.

“Shots!” the skinny man cried and ducked.

Shaw, protected from the current by his rubber soles, sprinted to the fire door.

“Wasn’t a shot, you idiot,” Braxton raged.

Shaw had taken a gamble—that the system overriding the latching mechanism of the emergency door would deactivate when power was lost.

Before Droon and the others could recover and pursue, Shaw grabbed a chair and then slammed into the exit bar with his hip. The door crashed open. He shoved it closed and wedged the chair back against the door handle, bracing it.

A shout. Shaw believed it was “Stop him!” He knew for sure it was Braxton’s voice.

Shaw was tempted to run straight to his cycle but he kept to his original plan, turning to the right, away from the Yamaha, and sprinted full-out for the cross street. He heard a crash. It would be the fire exit door being muscled open and the chair that barred it flying into the street.

“Shaw!” Droon was shouting.

Shaw sprinted harder. At the side street, Morrison Lane, he turned to the right again.

And learned he’d made a mistake. Morrison did end at a park, but it was filled with people, who’d be in the direct path of any shots.

Then Shaw noted ahead of him an alley, on his left. He knew from the map that it would lead him to several parking garages, which he could weave through, giving him the chance to shake Droon and Blond. Shaw could then emerge and circle around to his bike—and his weapon.

Thirty yards until the alley.

Twenty, fifteen . . .

A glance back. No pursuers in sight yet.

Ten.

Five.

Before he got to the alley, he stopped and ducked behind a dumpster. He looked back at Droon and Blond moving in his direction. They were alone. The black-suited security people would have continued along the street on which the library was located.

Okay, into the alley . . .

He sprinted around the corner.

And stopped fast.

A dead end.

The alley was completely blocked by a construction site wall, ten feet high, plywood. The paint job—dark blue—was relatively new; only a few graffitied obscenities and gang tags marred the surface. This explained why the barricade had not been depicted on the map he’d examined in the safe house.

Shaw didn’t bother to look for alternative forms of escape. The alley was doorless and windowless and though his father had taught him how to ascend walls of various heights and configurations, the technique for surmounting a ten-foot sheer surface was not part of the repertoire, not without rope or timber.

He’d no more than turned around when Droon and Blond stepped into the mouth of the alleyway.

Both were breathing hard and Blond winced with an apparent stitch in his side. He wasn’t happy for the exercise.

Droon might have had a pain somewhere but he was also smiling broadly, as if Shaw’s irritating attempt to escape had given the crazy man license to be particularly hearty—and creative—when it came to the torture that would follow.

12

Noting the absence of doors and windows opening onto the alley, Droon returned to the mouth and peered out. He looked up and down the street. His face revealed a hint of satisfaction, which meant no traffic, no pedestrians.

No witnesses.

He joined Blond once more. The two stood about twenty feet from Shaw. Neither was holding a weapon. They knew Shaw wasn’t armed; he’d been through the metal detector. Blond now drew a silenced pistol. The SIG Sauer—a big, expensive and accurate gun—was pointed at the ground.

Blond: “We need a car.”

Droon: “I’ll text the Men in Black. They’ll get one.”

“Soon. Out in the open here. Don’t like it.”

Droon sent the message. He was grinning. “But maybe he’ll cooperate ’fore they get here. And we’ll just leave him be.” He gestured toward Blond. They rolled the dumpster into the mouth of the alley, largely protecting them from view. Blond used only his left hand and kept the gun trained near Shaw. The safety was off, the finger outside the trigger guard. He knew what he was doing.

Shaw’s impression was that neither man reported to the other. Blond, a facilitator like Droon, would also work for Braxton.

“Now, son, let’s have ourselves a confab, don’tcha know?” He reached under his jacket and withdrew a knife from a camo scabbard. Shaw recognized it. Long, serrated. It was a SOG SEAL Team Elite fixed blade.

Looking around, Shaw judged angles and distances.

No good defensive solution presented itself, let alone an offensive one.

“Number one, that manuscript of your daddy’s you so kindly let me have down in Silicon Valley coupla weeks ago, that was just a waste of good tree, wasn’t it?”

Not for Colter Shaw, it wasn’t. The four-hundred-some-odd-page stack of notes, maps, drawings and articles that Ashton had assembled was ninety-nine percent misdirection. But it contained the code that had directed Shaw to Echo Ridge, where he found the map and the letter that led to the Alvarez Street safe house and started Shaw on his mission here.

“I wouldn’t know. You stole that from me too, didn’t you? I never had a chance to read it. Did it have anything interesting in it?”

Shaw wondered if a passerby, someone in a window or on a rooftop, seeing a man with a gun, would call the police.

Droon was pointing the wicked blade Shaw’s way. “How’d you find our library? Your daddy knew about it, did he?”

“Think he mentioned