The Bone Conjurer Read Free Page B

the water, and struggle with the backpack then, she heaved herself up. Using the rope wrapped about the moorings, she managed to slap a hand onto the dock.
    The sting of a warm leather-gloved hand gripped her wrist, and reeled her in as if a giant fish. She was able to stand—for two seconds.
    A fist to her gut forced up a hacking cough of water. Annja stumbled backward. Her soggy boots slipped on the wet plank dock. She went down. The landing might have hurt worse if she had feeling in her body. The cold did a number on that.
    Kicking at the man who leaned over her, she managed a boot to the side of his face. He yowled. The hood of his jacket fell away to reveal a bald head.
    She hadn’t the mental dexterity, or warm enough muscles, to exercise a judo kick or to pull out her Krav Maga moves.
    Annja turned and pushed to her knees. Swinging out her right hand, she willed the sword into her grip. It arrived from the otherwhere, solid and weighted perfectly to her hold.
    Not completely focused, her brain felt half-frozen. She blindly swung backward. Contact. The hilt struck his temple.
    The attacker went down in silence. Must not have expected the fish to bite back.
    Annja whipped the sword into the otherwhere. Moving as quickly as her numb limbs would allow, she crawled to the water’s edge and dipped a hand into the canal glimmering with oily residue. Her fingers hooked the backpack strap. It came free of the rebar with a tug.
    Her cheek settled on a thin layer of snowflakes. Lying sprawled, her hand gripping the heavy backpack, she closed her eyes.
    Did other women spend their Saturday nights like this? She must be doing something wrong. What did a girl have to do to meet a nice guy who wasn’t either set on killing her or being hunted himself?
    Standing, her body shivering and her steps moving her in zigzags across the ground, Annja didn’t look back.
    If the man lying on the ground was the sniper, she wanted to get out of his range before he came to.
    Her lungs thudded like heavy chunks of ice against her ribs, and the muscles in her legs felt as if they’d been stretched like taffy. She wasn’t far from home.
    Forcing herself to wander through the debris-littered back lot of a warehouse, she found the street and trudged onward.
    When a cab pulled alongside her, Annja hugged the icy yellow vehicle before crawling into the backseat.
     

    “G OOD GIRL , A NNJA . You got the prize.”
    Dropping the sniper scope, the tall dark-haired man quickly crossed the cement floor and descended the iron stairs. Each footstep clanked loudly. He wasn’t concerned with stealth.
    He’d almost been too late. Hadn’t been able to stop the first shot. But the second he’d altered the course. Not much, but enough to save the girl.
    Now, to see what she did with the prize.
     

    H ARRIS LET THE PHONE ring six times before hanging up. The sniper had agreed to contact him with details of the skull’s whereabouts, and keep him posted about each move Cooke made.
    He wasn’t supposed to fire a shot unless the man holding the skull looked as though he would hand it over to someone else. Cooke hadn’t even gotten the thing out of his backpack. Harris, from his vantage point on a building half a mile down the canal, bit back a growl as the pair went over the railing, taking the skull with them.
    “Idiot,” he muttered. “Ravenscroft must have hired the sniper. That man knows so little about fieldwork!”
    Tucking the cell phone inside his jacket, Harris eyed the brick-fronted warehouse where he knew the sniper had been positioned. The shooter should be long gone.
    Five minutes later, Harris topped the fourth-floor stairs in the abandoned warehouse. His shoes crunched across debris of broken glass and Sheetrock. An icy breeze whipped up his collar and froze his face. At the far end of the warehouse he saw the M-16 rifle, still set upon a tripod.
    He rushed through the darkness and stopped before he tripped over a man’s body.
    “What