Free Etched in Bone by Adrian Phoenix Page B

minibomb’s smooth shape—the B-and-E pro’s new all-purpose crowbar for gigs in the electronic world. She slid the minibomb onto the lockbox and thumbed in a ten-second countdown.
    Swiveling around on her heels and turning her hunched back to the door, Caterina pulled her goggles up and over her eyes. The night shifted into shades of gray and ghost-green. She unholstered her Sig, then, with the silent countdown ticking away in her mind, she pulled her oil-cloth wrapped silencer from the knapsack. She screwed the silencer onto the barrel with quick and efficient twists, and chambered a round.
    Her pulse threaded through her veins hard and fast. Her palms sweated inside her gloves. In the past, she’d always viewed her termination assignments as marks, targets. Her sworn duty.
    But this time she would be executing a man she knew and respected.
    With each life we end, we alter the future, end possibilities. We become agents of destiny. Severing some, fulfilling others. A hard and honorable duty.
    Epstein had altered his future the moment he’d assigned Caterina to end Dante Baptiste’s life, handing her a folder with instructions on how to kill a True Blood, never suspecting she’d already altered her own destiny.
    Caterina kneels and places her borrowed gun at Dante’s pale bare feet. He stares at her, disbelief flashing across his beautiful face . . .
    A soft beep. Countdown achieved. The porch light vanished.
    Caterina swung back around. The light on the lockbox had gone dark as well. The mini had done its job in complete silence, hitting the house and yard with a wave of EMP energy. A faint whiff of ozone curled into the air.
    Rising to her feet, Caterina eased the door open just enough to slip inside, her sneakers squeaking against the hardwood floor. She winced, hoping against goddamned hope that the slide of rubber against wood hadn’t been heard upstairs. She pushed the door closed, but didn’t shut it—not all the way.
    Sig in hand, Caterina hastily toed off her Airwalks. She listened. Adrenaline pumped through her veins with each rapid pulse of her heart, fine-tuning her senses.
    Refrigerator hum. The ticking of the pendulum clock. A gurgle from the toilet. And silence from the bedrooms upstairs.
    Caterina drew a breath in through her nose. The faint odor of Epstein’s cherry cordial pipe tobacco. The fishy scent of broiled salmon.
    She padded along the foyer’s polished floor in her stocking feet, her shoulder against one wall, her Sig secured in both hands. She paused at the mouth of the dark living room. Her night-vision goggles painted the room in pale shades of green as light from outside—light beyond the limited reach of her mini-bomb—filtered in through the blinds, outlining the shadowed humps of furniture.
    Locating the staircase, Caterina strode across the room and up the stairs, her socks whispering against the runner. She moved along the outer edge to avoid creaks, her gait swift and light. On the landing, she paused for a moment as she considered the shadowed mouths of three rooms.
    Guest room. Bathroom. Master bedroom. One room on the right-hand side of the hall, one dead ahead—the bathroom, in all likelihood—one room on the left-hand side.
    Caterina held her breath and listened. A low, almost inaudible snore drifted down the hall from the right. She swung to the right and followed the carpet runner stretching the length of the narrow hall to the doorway, her footsteps as light as meringue.
    Pressing her back against the wall, Caterina stopped and listened again. Now she could hear Epstein’s breathing. Steady, rhythmic, the quiet snore buzzing into the air like a bumblebee every few breaths.
    A hard and honorable duty. No, make that just a hard duty. No honor in shooting a sleeping man, no matter how necessary. She owed Epstein—mentor, hard-nosed boss, fellow samurai—more than that. But she couldn’t afford to give him more. Couldn’t afford to satisfy her own sense of honor.