Protective Measures. Maggie K. Black

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       THREE

      It was like swimming through a minefield in a hurricane. Thick smoke filled the air. The heat was like a shimmering wave in the darkness. Falling bricks and rock crashed down around them, churning the water and threatening to crush them alive. But in the midst of it all she felt Leo’s strong arm around her, sheltering her from the crumbling building as it collapsed in flames and rubble around them. Zoe swam upstream, her strong legs kicking for her life against the current, only vaguely aware of the voices yelling somewhere beyond her in the chaos. They cleared the debris, but kept swimming, upstream, letting the crowd and fire fade behind them.

      The air cleared. Then Leo stopped swimming, took her hand and pulled her into a bay. Rock rose sheer and high beside them. She tried to stand, but the tips of her toes barely brushed the bottom.

      “Are you okay?” he asked.

      She nodded, treading water. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”

      “Yep.” He slid her utility knife back into her hand. “Thank you for coming after me. I was good and stuck there for a moment.”

      She took the knife and traded him for his cell phone, hoping for his sake it was waterproof. Behind them the fire raged, lights from what looked like an endless stream of emergency vehicles flashed and spun, and silhouettes of people crowded the shoreline.

      “We should go,” she said. Her eyes searched the rock for handholds. “I have to find Alex and I imagine a lot of people will be looking for you.”

      “Hang on.” He reached for her hand. “Just one second. We need to talk.”

      Here and now? In a river?

      “Okay,” she said. “But let’s get out of the water first and talk on the dry land. It’s so deep, I can’t even stand here.”

      But instead, he pulled her closer until she was standing on her tiptoes on top of his boots.

      “You’re right, people will be looking for us,” Leo said. His hand slid around her back, holding her firm, even as she could feel the current beating against their bodies. “But we need to talk alone, without an audience, and the moment I get to shore I’ll be swamped by people again. So please, quickly, tell me everything you know about The Anemoi.”

      The intensity in his voice rattled something inside her. There was an urgency there that she hadn’t heard before. Had he been The Anemoi’s target? Did he know something about The Anemoi or the fire that he wasn’t telling her? She could feel his hand on the small of her back and the strength of his arms under her fingers. This man had saved her life. She had saved his. Yet, he was still virtually a stranger and she was still on a mission.

      “Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you five minutes, but then I’m climbing out of this river. Also, I’m talking to you off the record. None of this goes to the press. None of this gets repeated as gossip. Okay? I’m trusting you here.”

      “Yeah, I got it,” he said. “I’m good at keeping secrets and I can’t abide gossip. You can trust me.”

      She took a deep breath and hoped that was true.

      “Two months ago, a client contacted us saying his identity had been stolen and his bank accounts emptied,” Zoe said. “Police had no leads. We said we’d look into it, but honestly didn’t expect to find much. We’re a private security firm, not detectives. Then, three weeks later someone else called us claiming to be the victim of a grand conspiracy to ruin his reputation.”

      “And you saw a connection?” Leo asked.

      “Samantha did,” Zoe said. “She’s brilliant when it comes to online research and making connections. She started digging into something called the Dark Web and building these info charts, before finally hitting on The Anemoi. Basically, they’re a bunch of loosely connected crooks that steal very important things for people, for a very high price. They tend to go by handles from Greek mythology. Like, the guy who attacked me with the knife calls himself Prometheus after the Titan who stole fire from Olympus. In their twisted minds they’re convinced they’re the good guys, righting wrongs and wrecking lives they think deserve to be destroyed.”

      Leo blew out a long breath. She waited. When he didn’t say anything more, she kept going.

      “I get how ridiculous it probably sounds,” she said, “that there are these people, who are fooling themselves into thinking they’re some kind of heroes when they’re really just criminals being paid a whole lot of money to utterly ruin people’s lives.”

      “In my experience most criminals tend to be pretty delusional СКАЧАТЬ