Chapter 1 - THE SECOND ATTACK
“Run,” the stranger said—and then a bullet punched through the temple door.
The sound snapped through the screaming crowd.
I stared at the fresh hole in the wood.
“That wasn’t glass,” I said.
“No.” His hand closed around my wrist. “That was for you.”
Another shot cracked.
He dragged me behind a stone column as people scattered across the courtyard. A woman fell. Two men pulled her away. Somewhere inside, an alarm started screaming.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Not here.”
“You tackled me before the window fell.”
“I know.”
“You knew it was coming.”
His jaw tightened.
A third shot hit the column and sprayed stone dust across my face.
“Move, Maya.”
I froze.
I had never told him my name.
He saw the question on my face and swore under his breath.
“Later.”
“No. Now.”
He leaned close, eyes hard. “If you want to live long enough to hate my answer, you need to move.”
That did it.
We ran.
He shoved open a narrow service door beside the prayer hall. The corridor beyond smelled like wax and old wood. My shoes slipped on dust as he pulled me past storage rooms and a row of framed photographs.
Behind us, footsteps slammed into the hall.
Not panicked footsteps.
Measured ones.
Someone was following.
The stranger stopped at a corner, grabbed a brass candle stand, and waited.
A man in a gray jacket rushed around the turn with a pistol raised.
The stranger swung once.
Metal hit bone. The gun flew. The man crashed into the wall.
I gasped.
“Go!”
I grabbed the fallen gun without thinking.
The stranger looked at me.
“What?” I snapped. “I watch television.”
For the first time, he almost smiled.
Then the man on the floor whispered, “Asset Forty-Seven is moving.”
My stomach dropped.
The stranger’s smile vanished.
He crouched, ripped an earpiece from the man’s ear, and crushed it under his shoe.
“What is Asset Forty-Seven?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
We burst through a rear exit into a delivery alley.
A black SUV turned the corner at the far end.
The stranger pulled me behind a dumpster just as the SUV accelerated toward us.
“You have a car?” I whispered.
“Had one.”
“What happened to it?”
“They found it first.”
“Great.”
The SUV was fifty yards away.
Thirty.
Twenty.
Then a temple maintenance truck backed out of a loading bay between us and the SUV.
The stranger moved instantly.
He threw open the passenger door, shoved me inside, and jumped behind the wheel.
The maintenance worker yelled, “Hey!”
“Sorry!” I shouted as we tore away.
The SUV clipped our rear bumper.
The truck fishtailed.
I slammed into the door and screamed.
“Seat belt,” he said.
“You think?”
He cut through an intersection against the light. Horns exploded around us.
I looked back.
The SUV was still there.
Then my eyes caught something on the truck’s cracked dashboard.
A small black phone.
It lit up.
One message.
NOAH: SHE’LL GO TO THE TEMPLE ON THURSDAY. DON’T BE LATE.
I stopped breathing.
Noah was my brother.
Noah had been dead for seven years.
I held up the phone with both hands.
The stranger went pale.
“You want to tell me,” I said, “why my dead brother sent you a message this morning?”
He stared at the road.
Then he said the five words that broke my world open.
“Because Noah may be alive.”
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