The Milestone Protocol by Ernest Dempsey (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

probably saved it more than a few times, and yet he felt doubts deep down inside.

He shook off the thoughts as they reached the street.

They continued to a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn, and then hurried across the busy road before it changed. Seconds after the light turned green for the automobile traffic, the vehicles zoomed by, drivers eager to get to wherever they were going, or perhaps just out of the snow that had continued to dump from the dark clouds overhead.

The group made a left on the sidewalk and continued another three hundred feet until they arrived at the parking lot where they’d left the rental. There were several other cars parked there—most, Sean realized, were the same ones they’d seen on the way in, with few exceptions.

They rounded the corner into the lot where a cluster of shrubs and a scraggly tree hugged a stone wall. Sean had only taken five steps into the lot when he heard the voice order him to stop.

“That’s far enough,” the mysterious masculine tone commanded. “Move over to the wall and don’t turn around.”

Tommy involuntarily twisted his head and saw a man with a black bandana pulled up over his face, all the way to his nose. Black sunglasses with dark-tinted lenses shielded his eyes, and a black beanie covered his head, though a dark patch of hair snuck out just over the right ear. The thing that caught Tommy’s attention most, however, was the Glock in the man’s hand.

“I said don’t turn around,” the man warned. His voice was male but younger than everyone in the group. Sean placed him in his early twenties, but only because he doubted anyone following them would be younger. Then again, he was beginning to think nothing was beneath the Cult of Thoth.

“Against the wall, between those two cars. Now.”

The man wagged his pistol, lowering it to his waist to keep it out of sight from anyone passing by.

Sean hesitated, cursing himself for letting this guy get the drop on him. Just when he thought he’d sharpened his game, too.

Tommy and Tabitha did as they were told and shuffled over to the wall.

Adriana paused as well, staring down at the snow while trying to find a weakness in their assailant through her peripheral vision.

“You’re not moving,” the man said to her and Sean.

“If you were going to kill us, you would have done it already,” she sneered.

“I could have shot all of you, but there are cars driving by,” he said.

Adriana’s ears pricked at the accent. Was it Greek? If not, it sure sounded like it, but perhaps it was another Mediterranean nation influencing his words. “And of course, I don’t want to accidentally shoot the gem. Now, stand against the wall, or I will be forced to shoot you in the head.”

“So, we’re bickering over minutes and seconds at this point,” Sean commented.

Adriana kept her head low, chin close to her neck, still staring down at the snow, searching for an angle.

“I know what you’re doing,” the man said to her. “I know you’re armed. There is no way you or your friend here can draw your weapons fast enough to take me down. So please, don’t bother.”

“Better to die on your feet than on your knees,” Adriana mused.

She lifted her head and turned to face their would-be killer, defying his command.

For a second, nothing happened. The man stared back at her from behind tinted lenses, giving no sense of what he was thinking or what he might do. Then, oddly, the gunman shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said, disbelief flooding his voice. “This can’t be.”

Adriana puzzled at the reaction.

“This…this isn’t possible,” the gunman continued. “I thought….” His voice faltered for a second, as if choking back tears. “Is it really you?”

Tommy looked back from where he stood by the wall. He wanted to say something, do something, but all he could manage was to gawk. Tabitha turned around as well, finally fed up with having her back to a gun.

Neither Adriana nor Sean knew what to say amid their utter bewilderment.

The gunman reached up to his mask with his free hand and pulled it down to his neck, revealing his mouth and nose. Then he pinched an arm of his sunglasses and pulled them from his face and placed them in a coat pocket. The last thing he removed was his beanie, tugging it away from a thick mop of black hair.

“Do you not recognize the boy whose life you saved all those years ago?”

Adriana’s eyes widened as the epiphany hit her like a ten-megaton bomb. “Niki?” she managed. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. His lips trembled, and she knew it wasn’t from the cold. “It’s me.”

37

Moscow

For what seemed like hours, no one said anything. Sean, Tommy, and Tabitha merely stared at the two, their eyes bouncing back and forth between Adriana and the young man named Niki. Without his mask, sunglasses, and hat, he looked younger than they initially thought—perhaps still a teenager; in the strictest sense of the word. His face was chiseled, though it still displayed signs of inexperienced youth and the faintest trace of innocence.

Adriana wanted to rush to the young man and embrace him, but he was still holding a pistol, and she was still uncertain if he was going to kill her or not.

Distraught and obviously grappling with the same question, Niki looked around, checking the road and sidewalks for any wandering eyes. He lowered his weapon to his side, keeping it out of view from anyone other than his four marks.

“What…what happened to you?” Adriana asked, her words faltering amid a vortex of emotions.

The young man considered the question, laboring over how to answer it. “When you set me free, you told me to run. So I did. I took the path back to the road and eventually found my way into the nearest town.” Tears threatened to streak down his face, but he somehow held them back.