Free Scorpion Deception by Andrew Kaplan Page A

above, where all the sniper would see were his head and shoulders.
    They’d set it up well, he realized. The man on the motorbike had been a decoy. Another few seconds, and if he hadn’t shoved Sandrine to the Metro stairs, the sniper would have killed them both. He had told her that knowing him would be dangerous, and she’d probably wondered if he was being melodramatic. He hadn’t expected it to be proven right so quickly.
    Did the sniper know about the vertical trajectory? he wondered. One way to find out. Taking a deep breath, he rolled out from under the car and sprinted to the apartment house door, a bullet drilling into the sidewalk behind him as he slammed himself flat in the doorway.
    He had been right. The sniper overshot the point of impact by a few critical centimeters.
    Scorpion used the Peterson universal key to open the door and enter the building. The hallway was typically Parisian: a patterned tile floor, flowered wallpaper, a staircase and narrow elevator. Gun ready, he pressed the button for the timed hall light and looked up the staircase. Nothing moved.
    He pushed the button for the elevator, and using the noise as it started down to cover his footsteps, climbed the stairs, whipping around at every turn and landing, ready to fire. The timed hall light went off. He crept up to the top floor, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Reaching the landing, he hesitated, peering into the darkness.
    It would be impossible to go up the stairs to the roof. The sound of the roof door opening would alert the sniper. At that distance, and as a stationary target for an instant, the shot would be fatal. He needed another way onto the roof.
    Moving on tiptoe down the carpeted hallway, he put his ear to the first apartment door. Through it he could hear a television. Someone was listening to a game show, La Rue de la Fortune. Wheel of Fortune. He went to the next apartment door and thought he heard someone talking inside. The third apartment was silent. It didn’t look like it was wired for an alarm. Just to be sure, he knocked. If someone answered, he’d tell them he was l’électricien sent by the concierge to investigate a problem. But there was no answer. Using the Peterson key, he opened the lock and went inside.
    The apartment was dark, quiet. He used a pocket LED flashlight to look around, but whoever lived there was out. The window overlooked the Avenue de Wagram. No good, he thought. The sniper was probably right above him, where he could cover the Place des Ternes and the Metro entrance and street. To have any chance, he would need to work his way over toward the other side of the building to try and come up on the sniper from behind.
    Provided the sniper was alone and didn’t have a spotter. Otherwise all bets were off, he thought, opening the window and climbing out, his toes on the sill so he could reach up to the ledge he had spotted from below.
    The night was cool and clear. He slipped his toes into a crevice in the building’s facade and pulled himself up by his fingers till his forearms and elbows rested on the ledge. The roof parapet was about a meter above the ledge, so he would have to crouch or crawl, heaving himself up till he could swing a leg over it. For a few seconds he dangled from his arms, gripping the ledge. Don’t look down! he told himself.
    A moment later he was lying flat on the ledge, staring down at the street four stories below, hoping he hadn’t made a sound. He looked up, but saw only the top of the parapet and the sky. He listened intently. There was no way to know where the sniper was; he could be only a meter away.
    Slowly, Scorpion moved onto his toes and knees, one foot behind the other, making sure to stay crouched below the top of the parapet. The ledge was barely six inches wide. He felt horribly exposed. Someone honked a horn below. For an instant he looked down, but it was just normal traffic. In the distance, over the tops of