Alpha One (Shadow Agents 1)

LOGAN WHIRLED AT THE sound of shattering glass, and when he saw a woman’s delicate form plummeting from the window, his heart stopped.

He lurched forward, all of his instincts forgotten. It was too dark. All he could see was the tangle of hair on the ground. A broken body. Blood.

No!

A knife shoved into his back.

“Don’t worry,” a voice whispered in his ear, “I’ll make sure the pretty lady joins you in hell.”

Not Juliana.

Through the moonlight, he could just see the woman’s face. Not Juliana. Susan.

He spun around and grabbed the man behind him by the throat. “You’re not...touching her.”

This time, the man drove a knife into Logan’s chest.

Logan attacked. He shattered the man’s wrist, pounded with his fists, went for the man’s throat. His prey was near death when...

Another man appeared and drove a needle into Logan’s neck. Logan roared and tossed him back. The second attacker fell, his body crumpling into a heap.

But it was too late.

Logan’s body began to shake. His vision blurred. He tried to swing out at the man charging him, but Logan’s body slumped to the ground. He wanted to shout a warning, to Jasper, to Gunner, to Juliana, but he couldn’t speak.

Shadows closed in on him, faces he couldn’t see. Then a blade pressed over his throat.

* * *

“YOU’RE GOING TO BE all right,” Juliana said as she pressed towels against Gunner’s wounds. “I’m getting you help, okay?” She’d tried to call an ambulance, but the telephone upstairs had been dead. With the firefight going on out there...where was the backup?

More cops had to be coming. Cops and EMTs. They’d fix Gunner. They had to.

He caught her hand. His fingers were bloody, and they slipped over her skin. “Hide.”

She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“No more...gunfire.”

He was right. But there’d been a lull in the gunfire before. She wasn’t about to think it was safe just to have bullets start blasting again.

“Stay...down.”

Now he sounded just like Logan. She tried to smile for him. Hard, when she was sure the man was bleeding out right in front of her eyes.

“I’m going to my room and getting my cell phone.” She’d call for help. She wasn’t letting him die while she did nothing. So those attacking might have cut the lines that connected the house phones, but they wouldn’t be able to stop her from using her cell. “Everything’s going to be okay.” Juliana hoped she sounded more reassuring than she felt.

Gunner’s dark, tired gaze called the words a lie, but he didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t speak any longer.

Juliana lurched to her feet. She took a staggering step forward and—saw a faint glint from the corner of her eye.

She spun back around, her gaze flying to the painting. Susan had slashed it over and over, and there, hanging out from the bottom of the canvas, Juliana could just see the faint edge of...

A flash drive.

He said he gave you the evidence.

She grabbed the drive with her bloodstained fingers. People were dying outside because of this tiny thing. She shoved the drive into her pocket and rushed for the door.