Free Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) by Thomas Waite Page A

hours to see him: Bones must be dying. It’s what a man does when the end is near—if he’s weak and sentimental.
    “What is it?” he asked his old teammate. “Cancer? What kind you got?” Vinko was smiling now. “How much time you got left? I’ll bet not much.”
    Ludmila pressed the barrel against his face.
    “Don’t,” Bones said to her. He locked eyes with Vinko. “I got time. I just don’t have any more for you. No regrets.”
    He got back behind the wheel, but Ludmila didn’t move. Vinko wondered whether she’d actually shoot him. Two witnesses and a history of white pride that would be used against him. But the worst part would be dying at the hands of a race traitor.
    “He’s a good man,” she said in his ear. “He just wanted to make peace with the one asshole in his life. You are scum.”
    “And you sleep with filth,” Vinko dared. He shook his head in genuine disgust, pressing hard against the muzzle. Yes, daring her to shoot him, because now he knew she wouldn’t. She loved Bones too much to fuck up their last weeks or months together.
    She backed away, relaxing her aim.
    “Come back when he finally dries up and dies. I’ll show you some real fun.”
    Ludmila fired right above his head. Vinko never flinched and, to his credit, neither did Biko, though the dog’s haunches began to shake.
    Bones yelled for Ludmila to get in the car, and Vinko watched them drive away with his Ruger, kicking up dust that hung in the air like a bad odor.
    He let out the goats and put Biko back to work. Then he walked back inside, trying to put aside the unpleasant encounter.
    This was the greatest reward in life, he told himself: outliving the ones you loathed. Some died all on their own. Others had to be taken down.
    He headed straight to his office with Lana Elkins foremost in mind.

FBI AGENT ROBIN MARAY trailed Lana silently into the office she used at NSA headquarters. He settled across the room from her, checked his phone, and studiously avoided all eye contact. It was as if they had no past. But they’d packed plenty of history into a lone night two years ago, potent enough that Lana now struggled to focus on her work. She had to. The security of the nation might be at stake, though fortunately there had been no bombs or other terrorist activity in the past twenty-four hours. Noting an absence of gruesome violence for a single sweep of the clock actually said reams about the otherwise miserable status of the country.
    Well , there was one bomb , she thought, casting a quick glance at Robin, whom she’d met in a trendy Georgetown bar, just days before the grid went down and launched the cyberwar era in earnest.
    Since Don had left Emma and her to smuggle boatloads of pot from South America up through the Caribbean, she’d directed almost all her free time to her growing daughter. But Emma had had a trusted babysitter so Lana could maintain a social life, mostly meeting work friends for drinks and dancing about once a month. And she’d met only a handful of men in Don’s fourteen-year absence, twice in bars, once after a colleague had stood her up. Less Looking for Mr. Goodbar than a slightly sybaritic Jane Goodall on holiday from the chimps.
    To the point: nothing scandalous, which was precisely why she’d spurned online dating. She knew as well as anyone in the world how little she could depend on real privacy with the porous security of most of those websites. Rather than slipshod encryptions, she had trusted her gut, though the whole of her had been attracted to Robin in the time it took to make eye contact. Basically, a blink.
    Of course he’d drawn her attention in that crowded bar. Look at him! she thought now, glancing away from her monitor. Curly blond hair, closely cropped; blue eyes, very bright; and a strong jaw and body. You could tell a lot with a glance, especially when your eyes were wide open, which Lana’s had been on that evening.
    He’d bought her a drink, Glenfiddich straight