The Assassin's Mark (Skeleton Key) Read Free

Gotcha! This was working out nicely. I rearranged the trash bags to conceal his body. He wouldn't be found for hours to come.
    After taking a few moments to be sure there were no other guards around, I finally began my approach. The numbers on the key guided me toward the correct flat. A couple of stairs later, I stood beside a heavy metal door in a hallway with no windows and a narrow walkway. The out of service lift was stuck on my current floor with its doors repeatedly trying to open and close behind me. I stayed quiet, doing my best to listen to my surroundings and piece together what was taking place. Everyday sounds of talking or television came from several of the flats. Something felt off about all of this.
    Shite.
    I headed down to the second floor and called Croft to inform him of the situation. This was exactly like what happened in Berlin. The terrorist tried to kill as many people as he could with his bombs. There were several tenement buildings here with a school nearby. A serious amount of explosives could be in the lift stuck between floors where the terrorists could freely access it in middle of the night. Croft told me that there were at least five people in the flat where my target was. Any one of them could have the trigger, and the lift itself could be trapped.
    "Of course. On a bloody Monday," I grumbled under my breath after hanging up.
    The process was clear. Evacuate the building, disarm the explosive, and get rid of the threat. The last two sometimes took care of themselves, but more often than not, it was better to deal with the explosive before taking out hostiles.
    The close proximity to the school and the threat being just a few doors down from the lift made my skin crawl. To hell with the procedure. If they caught wind that something was wrong, who knew what they'd do. Locating a maintenance door to the lift shaft took only a few moments. At least the maintenance man had left a spare hoistway key nearby that I put into my pocket.
    The lift itself rested on the cables several feet down from where I was. The ladder would give me access to the elevator, but I didn’t trust it. What if it was booby-trapped? I grabbed the cables and slowly slid down to the lift’s roof.
    With sore hands, I opened the hatch on top and took a cursory glance. Inside the darkness, I could faintly make out the shape of pressure containers, gas bottles resting against tins, and closed containers littering the floor. A few red lights here and there made it evident that some of the makeshift bombs were powered, making them dangerous to disarm. I wasn’t exactly a trained bomb tech, but I knew enough. Using my flashlight to scan the packages, I couldn’t discern any pattern, organization, or other reason for the materials to be spread around inside the lift as they were. Extensive sets of wires ran to and from a small box beneath what seemed to be an acetylene gas container.
    I tucked my feet beneath the support bar holding the cables and lowered my head and torso inside the lift, being careful not to touch anything. With the flashlight in my mouth, I did my best not to grimace as I hunted for the section of explosive that mattered the most, the remote detonator. With the reinforced metal of the lift acting like a Faraday cage, it wasn’t hard to find. Thick wires were running out of the lift’s main body and outside of it. It had even been wired to some of the control panels inside the main cage to ensure the device’s batteries were fully charged.
    All in a day’s work.
    I reached for a smaller utility knife on my belt making sure all of my movements were slow and careful. I peeled off the protective layer on the antenna cable making sure not to touch the conductive wiring inside. First, I’d have to check if this thing was protected by an active signal. With no voltmeter, I touched the wire to the tip of my tongue and waited. Nothing happened. No jolts of any kind. Satisfied, I followed the wire around the