Shadow Woman: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

he’d had so many hours of weapons training that almost any weapon fit his hand as naturally as his own skin. It wasn’t his size, though, that made would-be muggers think twice; it was the way he moved, the hyper-alert vigilance of a predator—not that any muggers would ever think in those terms. Their survival instincts would more than likely whisper, “bad dude,” and they’d decide to wait for a more likely victim. Xavier was a lot of things; victim wasn’t one of them.
    He was back home by five thirty, and twenty minutes later he was already showered and dressed, which today meant jeans and boots, and a black tee shirt. The color of the tee shirt changed from day to day, but the rest of it was pretty much standard. “Dressed” meant he’d also checked his weapon, then situated his holster so it rode his right kidney. The big Glock wasn’t the only weapon he carried, but it was the only one that was readily visible. Even in his own home—perhaps most particularly there—he was always armed with two or more weapons, and never more than a step away from others in his private arsenal.
    He didn’t feel paranoid; most of the other black ops people he knew did the same. Home was a point of vulnerability, for him and for everyone in the business, because it was a fixed point. People who stayed on the move were much harder to target. The good news was that, as far as he knew, no one was gunning for him … yet. The “yet” was always there, acknowledged but unspoken.
    Because of that, he’d taken the precaution of buying two condo units, side by side. One was in his name; the other was in the name of J. P. Halston. If anyone checked deeper, they’d find that the “J. P.” stood for Joan Paulette. A lot of single women went by their initials. Joan had a social security number and a bank account, paid her maintenance and utility bills on time, and had no love life at all. He knew because he was Joan and she didn’t really exist, except on paper. Currently, his andJoan’s love lives had a lot in common, which was a real pisser, but that was reality and he could deal.
    He slept in one condo and kept the other as a safety valve; he’d installed a hidden door, which could be opened only with the fingerprint of his left little finger, in the back-to-back closets linking the two. He’d put other safety measures in place as well, because someone in his line of work couldn’t be too careful. He hoped to God most of them were a waste of time, because if he ever really needed them, then it meant he was chin-deep in a world of shit. His particular skill set was valuable because he was both bold and careful, an attitude he applied to his private life as well as his work.
    The powers that be were stupid as hell if they didn’t expect that, so he operated under the premise that they
did
. He felt more comfortable when everyone—within a limited circle—knew what everyone else was doing. Probably that was why he was still alive; they figured he’d set a trigger to expose them if they ever made a move against him. In that case, they were one hundred percent correct. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t someday try to find a way around, over, or under the situation; when that happened the political shit-bomb would be about to explode and everyone would be scrambling to survive, which was the exact situation he watched for. He’d known the price going in and had judged the end result worth the cost. Unfortunately, the cost had turned out to be higher than he’d expected.
    Like he did every morning, he sat in the small, shielded room in the safety-valve condo, which served as the nerve center for all of his various alerts, electronic trip wires, and information-gathering programs, drinking coffee while he listened and read, and monitored the monitorers. He’d piggybacked onto their systems, so when her house was swept they picked up only their own bugs, but, again, he figured they knew anyway. If they hadn’t been