Balthazar with a shotgun in his hand, a bright smile on his face, and his long black hair billowing out in the wind like a cape.
“Wonderful to see you Xander Cage.” His voice was heavy with his southern accent. “You guys shouldn’t bother. You won’t stop me.”
He pulled a file from the bag he’d been carrying. I already knew what it was.
The fucking research.
He had it, he actually had it in his hands. All that work to protect Vlad, and shit, this was what happened. Vlad had a hole in his head and the enemy had the research.
The thing was Balthazar only made his presence known for some sort of reason.
What was it?
I glanced out the corner of my eye to check that Claire was safe and thanked fuck she hadn’t taken on that ballsy attitude of hers by following me. She and the other guys had taken cover.
“Why are we seeing you!” I roared. I wasn’t in the mood for his shit this time.
I’d seen this man a total of five times. Every time was a sort of heads up to something disastrous about to happen.
He laughed. “On the news tonight, we’ll hear how Vlad Hanflick, our clever scientist, was killed in an attack and how the entire village got blown to smithereens. Ten bombs going off everywhere. The question is can you get out in time or will you save the children in the orphanage? You only have three and a half minutes Xander Cage, tick-tock.”
I didn’t wait for him to finish. The motherfucker was a nasty piece of work. He’d put a bomb in the orphanage!
In my head I conjured up the map we’d seen of the area. The orphanage was near the lake house. There was a playground nearby.
In blind panic I moved swift like the wind. It reminded me of that first time I ran for my life.
I was sixteen and got involved with the worst crowd. Mobsters. They wanted me to pick something up. Drugs. It was a bag of drugs. The whole thing went wrong and they nearly killed me, nearly beat the life out of me.
I’d managed to escape. That was when Jack and Claire found me. I’d hid in their garage.
The fear from that time fueled my moves now because that was the first time I’d ever felt true fear. Fear that I would die. That I wouldn’t make it. It came to me now because it was that thing again, fear I wouldn’t make it.
All around me the bombs started going off. One, then another. It shook the ground making me stumble. I leapt over a bench and raced to the orphanage.
It was just ahead.
Just ahead.
I was almost there, my goal to get anybody inside out.
I could see people inside through the long French windows. There was a woman and a little boy.
The minute I registered that however the scene was wiped away from me with the blast of a bomb more powerful than the others.
It knocked me back, right off my feet. It knocked me but still I crawled forward. I kept going like I could still save them.
Disbelief took me.
I couldn’t believe I failed. I was sure it couldn’t have been three and a half minutes since I’d spoken to the bastard. Then it hit me. It wasn’t.
It was all part of his game.
I never had a chance.
I never had a chance and he wanted me to know I didn’t. He wanted to teach us a lesson.
We couldn’t stop him.
I couldn’t.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Xander
Present day …
My first reaction was to contact Ethan and Wes for an emergency meeting.
It was no damn coincidence that we knew The Ra was involved and I saw Balthazar today.
Over the last few weeks we didn’t link his association because The Ra were so vast and there were so many groups of them all over the world.
Now I was for damn certain that he was involved.
The sight of him meant that things were next level bad.
In five years I’d never come close to seeing the man.
To date I’d spent over two million on various missions Wes and I had planned to find him. That was how much I’d spent to get a possible sighting of one of the most notorious terrorist associates and came back with shit.
Nothing every time.
Yet, today he was just simply at the casino. Right there out in the open like the everyday person who went there for fun.
The man had been looking at me, looking at me from across the other building. Right in my line of sight, but so far away.
Far away and positioned in a way to remind me that I couldn’t catch him.
Fucking asshole!
Wes and Ethan were already at the warehouse when I got there.
They knew it had to be serious for me to call this meeting because I was supposed to be floorwalking the casino.
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
“Balthazar Kane. That’s what happened. I just saw him, forty minutes ago at the casino. The man looked at me like we were just passersby and took off.” I wasn’t the sort of guy to blurt in a babble but that’s what I sounded like.
Ethan turned pale and Wes’ mouth dropped open.
“What the fuck?” Wes gasped.
“Yes what the fuck indeed.” I frowned and kicked out at the waste paper bin by the table. It flew across the room and crashed into the wall.
“Xander calm down.” Ethan had the audacity to say to me.
I glowered at him. “What do you fucking mean by calm down?”
I was ready to explode. Ready to explode and take the building down with me.
“This has just become worse but you need to calm so we can focus.” That was his answer. “Did you get close to him at all?”
“No, he was in the other building adjacent to the coffeehouse. I wouldn’t have reached him. He knew that. It’s just like the past Ethan. He was screwing with me, making me run after him, knowing I wouldn’t make it.”
Just like the mission to save Vlad and the orphanage…
The disaster that happened there was something I would never get over.
Knowing you had no chance to save people you knew were minutes from death. Children.
It was stuff like that why I didn’t talk much. I had too much shit on my mind.
All bad. All packed with death. Too much death.
Now there was this.
“I think we need to just focus,” Ethan repeated.
“Like fuck,” I cut in before he could continue that shit about focusing. “Ethan this is a whole other playing field. You and I both know that man only makes his presence known for some reason. The question we should be asking ourselves is what. What is the reason? And, what do we know is in Vegas that this prick could want? The fucking blueprints that Giovanni has. That’s what! The shootout and everything that’s happened so far is all linked to him. It’s him Ethan, not just the Ra in general on their own. It’s Balthazar and The Spades.”
My damn heart was beating so fucking fast I thought it was going to leap out of my chest. The more I thought about all of it, the pieces of the puzzle came together.
And as it did I thought of Jia. I was already worried about her. That worry had filled my soul the minute I knew of The Ra’s involvement.
Now it was so much worse. Balthazar wouldn’t hesitate to take her if he got desperate. The only reason why he probably hadn’t yet was that he’d seen some other way of getting what he wanted.