Free The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution by Michael Ivan Lowell Page B

barely keeping hold of his hand. Then she twirls again and spirals back
into his arms in one rapid, majestic motion. As she wraps herself around him,
their lips close on one another, her legs lock around the humming heat of his
armor. He takes her fully into his arms.
    She can feel her arousal
building when...
     
    Reality hit hard.
    Her cell phone blared music across
the now empty room. Only she and her clearly irritated English teacher
remained.
    “Fiona!” the teacher yelled again,
openly frustrated she had ignored him the first time.
    She swiftly killed the phone’s
ring.
    “Sorry.”
    “Yes, well. You have five minutes
left.”
     
     
    CHAPTER
13
     
     
    FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF
BOSTON 
    MORNING
     
    P aul
Ward had crammed himself into the most uncomfortable spot in all of Boston. He
was sardined into an air conditioner vent just above the vault area of the
bank. He was pretty sure this was how you stopped a bank heist. Had he wanted
to, he could have robbed this bank blind overnight.
    “I'd make a hell of a crook,” he'd
said to himself as he'd waited there for hours.
    But now morning had come, and more
importantly, the very event The Source had predicted was taking place. For more
than a year now, Ward had been monitoring the bank robberies committed by one
highly successful gang of criminals: the Brown Recluse .
    Mostly they robbed banks, but they
weren't like other organized crime outfits. Sure, they staked out territory and
they sold drugs, guns, anything else that was hot on the black market, just
like any other crime syndicate. But they also committed big, flashy, brazen
crimes out in the open and dared the authorities to come after them.
    No one was sure why the
authorities didn't. The rumor was the gang was on the Council’s payroll. Others
said they were just too mean to mess with.
    Ward was there to trap them in
their own web, so to speak. For him it was personal...
    He had worked long and hard to
figure out how they picked their targets. They had taken the extraordinary step
of publically announcing there was a pattern to their crimes. They sent
encrypted codes to the newspapers. Daring anyone with the smarts to figure out
how they did it. In the end, the former Harvard professor had cracked their
code.
    Ward knew that the job ahead of
him was going to require a cold, steady, passion-free hand and head. He’d been
mentally going through the plan all night, thinking of every scenario.
    Carefully, he removed the vent
cover and slid it silently into the vent beside him. Below him, the bank vault
lay wide open. A group of men were hauling out the cash in bags. There was
nothing but open air between him and the thieves.
    He lifted both arms and drew a
bead on them. Large cuffs on his sleeves whirred to life as they rotated like
the canister of a machine gun. All he had to do was think about it—neural
transmitter and all.
    Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!  
    Small darts zipped out, striking
the gangsters. In only seconds, the entire line had been hit. A few reached for
weapons, but before they could grasp them—in the span of a single
heartbeat—they collapsed.
    Paralyzed and unconscious.
    Ward's darts were the basis of his
new mission. The reason he was willing to get his hands dirty. Not just be an
aerial lookout for the authorities. His paralysis serum was the key. He had no
interest is killing anyone—didn't believe in it (another issue he had with the
Revolution). Just wanted to bring the people ruining this city to justice. He
had developed a blood accelerator that sent the serum from the capillaries to
the heart in a single beat. The darts only needed to pierce the skin to be
effective.   
    Ward leapt from the vent. Around
him, men in brown jumpsuits and brown ski masks lay sprawled across the floor.
Area secured.
    Then he heard a familiar voice.
    Ward spun around. Fifty feet in
front of him, in the main lobby of the bank, where terrified patrons and
employees had been forced to sit in a circle around