Dark Time: Mortal Path Read Online Free Page B

immediate response. Shots zinged past, and she hit the floor and rolled, pain tracing a fiery line on her shoulder. She arched her back, sprang up, and took out her first assailant with a roundhouse kick to the jaw that sent him spinning across the floor, sliding through the debris.
    A bullet struck her left arm as she did a handspring toward the other two men in the room. They overturned a table in her direction. Coins, cards, dollars, and drinks went flying. They’d been passing the time playing poker. She sidestepped the rolling table, and saw a flash of recognition in one of the men’s eyes that maybe they should have kept the table for cover. Exposed, they scuttled away in opposite directions, knocking over a couple of lamps.
    A kick to the stomach and the edge of her hand to the back of his neck turned one of the agents into dead weight, and he slumped against her. The last agent fired at her from across the room. The limp but still living body of the man she’d just disabled took the bullet squarely in the forehead as she ducked to the side. She somersaulted to reach the last agent as he pondered—a second too long—the fact that he’d just shot his buddy. A kick sent his gun spinning across the floor, and another kick sent him flying in the same direction, unconscious before he landed. She retrieved three guns from the room and flung them out of the broken window.
    She paused for a moment, looking at the man who’d taken a bullet for her. He was in his mid-thirties and in good physical shape, blue eyes staring, a strong chin, a lock of hair curling onto his forehead. In the prime of his life, most people would think. He wore a wedding band. Previously, she wouldn’t have given the dead man a glance, but lately the consequences of her actions lingered in her mind.
    He had a wife, maybe kids. Parents, friends. A widening circle of mourners, ripples in a pond. Most likely, the agent who shot him will blame it on me. And why not? If not for me, the man would be in his wife’s arms after this dull job, watching some accountant, was over.
    She flexed her left arm. The bullet had lodged in the muscle above the elbow and was going to hurt like hell when she dug it out with a knife later. The other spots where she’d been injured vied for her attention with various levels of pain, but none of them was serious. Although Susannah wasn’t immune to pain, wounds that might kill a human, like a shot to the heart, weren’t a threat to her. The only thing she had to fear was losing her head, literally.
    Susannah wiped her bloodied gloves on her pants and reclaimed her knife, sheathing it at her waist.
    She eased out into the brightly lit hall and tried the knob of the first door. It wasn’t locked, and opened with a small creak. She pushed the door fully open, rolled and came to her feet smoothly, a throwing knife poised in each hand.
    Ledger’s eyes followed her in the dim light of a lamp. He’d retreated to the furthest corner. An aura of dull brownish yellow surrounded him, shot with smudges of gray. The dark mustard color was 13 z 138
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    apprehension of pain and the gray represented dark thoughts, thoughts of a bad outcome.
    A man anticipating a painful death. No surprises.
    “You’re the Black Ghost.”
    Susannah blinked and paused in her approach. As she blinked, she saw his aura on the inside of her eyelids, but it faded immediately.
    “My wife wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but Emily was right. You were there, in Emily’s room, a week ago. To a seven-year-old, that’s what you were. A black ghost.”
    Susannah nodded. So she’d been seen.
    “The Feds denied it. They said nobody’d been in the house. Just covering their asses, as usual. Fuck.
    You were in my house with my family. Could’ve killed them all, right under the Feds’ noses.” Ledger sighed. “And here you are again. Goddamned Feds. You work for Tenaglia? He’s using a woman for his dirty work. That’s a low one,