Red Awakening (Red Zone 2)

There was silence.

She tried again. But still no music materialized. One by one, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It had to be a problem with the penthouse’s entertainment system, right? But instincts were screaming something else. Remaining calm, she dialed the concierge to ask if someone could get to the bottom of the issue. There was no response. Her heart started hammering erratically, and she sent out a comm message to Mace through the hotel’s network.

The message fell into dead space.

The implants that had been working just minutes earlier when she’d spoken to Abigail were now unresponsive. She tried hotel security. Local Enforcement. Her boss at CommTECH. All calls ended in silence. Her stomach clenched as an icy dread rushed up her spine. Something had disabled her implants, cutting off her access to the outside world. Which meant she needed to get out of the water, get dressed, and get some answers.

“Don’t scream,” a man said.

Keiko gasped and spun toward the voice. Three strangers stood in the shadows at the edge of the pool—two men and a woman. Her breath caught in her throat, and her hands trembled as her knees threatened to give out, making her grateful for the water holding her upr

ight. Her heart pounded so loudly she could barely hear anything over the sound.

“I’m impressed,” the woman said as she stepped into the light. “Usually, as soon as somebody says ‘don’t scream,’ there’s screaming.”

She was tall, athletic in build, with light brown skin and mid-brown hair that was long enough to tie in a ponytail on top of her head. But it wasn’t her looks that made Keiko’s breath hitch. It was the fact she was decked out with weapons.

Working hard to breathe evenly, Keiko assessed her situation. Her implants weren’t working, and she couldn’t reach out to the data network for help, which meant the intruders had somehow managed to jam the signals. She was naked and in water, which definitely didn’t give her an advantage—although they couldn’t touch her unless they got into the pool, too. There was no point in screaming for help, seeing as she was fifty floors above the rest of the world. That left waiting for Mace. He was her only chance at getting help. She just had to stall until he arrived.

“Who are you?” She was surprised at how calm she sounded when she was screaming inside, but all those years of putting on a show of confidence for the cameras were now paying off big-time.

“You don’ need to know.” It was the man who’d first spoken. He stepped into the light, and Keiko sucked in a breath. He was tall, brown-skinned, and ripped. There was a patch over his left eye and a gun in his hand. “We don’ wanna hurt you, we just wanna to talk. Do as you’re told, and you’ll be fine.”

She couldn’t help the mirthless laugh that escaped when she realized he’d said they didn’t want to hurt her, not that they wouldn’t hurt her. “Do you expect me to take your word on that?”

“You don’ really have a choice now, do you, chère?” His strange accent was hard to place, but then she remembered where she’d heard it before—during a history lesson on Cajun culture. Keiko didn’t think anyone still had that accent. Guess the history class was wrong.

The woman walked up to the edge of the pool, holding a robe out to Keiko. “Time to get out.” She smiled as though this whole surreal experience was great fun.

Keiko held up a hand to ward off the Amazon. “Don’t come any closer.” It was a dumb thing to say, forced out of her mouth by fear.

“Do I look like I can walk on water?” The woman shook the robe. “Come and get it. You know you don’t want to be naked while we talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you at all. I suggest you leave before you regret it.”

“What are you going to do? Splash me?”

The Amazon had a point.

“Stop messing around,” Eyepatch said. “Ms. Sato, please get out of the water so we can talk. Just talk. I promise, no one will lay a hand on you.”

“I think I’d rather stay right here.”

“Damn it.” The woman let out an irritated huff. “One of us will have to go in and get her, and it’s not going to be me.”

“It has to be you,” Eyepatch said. “She’s naked, and you’re the only other woman here.”

“You’re married. You only have eyes for your wife. You go in and get her.”

“My wife would kick my balls into next week if she knew I’d wrestled a naked woman out of a pool.”

“Then don’t tell her. I don’t want to get wet, and I’m not stripping in front of you two.”

“How about we just shoot her and go home?” the other man said, joining them. He was older than the others by a few years, maybe in his forties. Like the other two, he was muscled and decked in weapons. But unlike the others, his eyes were cold, and he seemed strangely remote from proceedings. As though he couldn’t care whether he was there or not. “That would be easier,” he said as he scratched the gold-and-gray beard covering his chin.

“No,” Eyepatch growled as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ms. Sato. You have my word that no harm will come to you. Please, get out of the pool.”

Was he serious? He wanted her to trust his word?