Read Online Missing Lynx by Fiona Quinn - Free Book Online Page B

satellite office. Parking was always a bitch in the city – and I was seriously rethinking my pointy-toed heels. They looked great, but boy were they torturous on the cold cement. I had my coat pulled tight against the wind. I could smell snow in the air.
    Once we arrived at the building, we flashed our credentials for the security guard and went through the metal detector. Our weapons were locked in the glove compartment of Striker’s Lexus RX400.
    In the conference room, two men stood by the window in deep conversation. They wore brown, cheap, badly tailored suits. And the word “dirt” came to mind – bland, uninteresting, unremarkable just like dirt. It would be hard to describe these guys two seconds after meeting them. It occurred to me that I used my appearance to my advantage, and I wondered for a minute whether these guys did the same. Perhaps “dirt” actually meant “dirty”— as in not to be trusted. Hmmm.
    “Ken MacNamaly.” Dirt-Guy One held out his hand.
    “Striker Rheas.” Striker reached for the handshake. The dirt brothers’ eyes met, just for a second, in silent, intense communication. I didn’t like them. MacNamaly turned to me, his hand jutting out.
    “Alex,” I said as I shook his hand.
    Striker lifted his chin in the slightest of nods. Alex was code. Whenever I introduced myself as Alex, Striker knew I’d be disappearing from the scene, so I could watch unobserved à la Master Wang.
     
    Master Wang was one of my earliest, and most beloved, un-schooling mentors. He taught me the martial arts that he had used as an elite soldier in China. I studied with him from the time I turned five until I was sixteen, and he moved away to Chicago. One of my favorite lessons was “shadow walking.” 
    When I became a shadow, my goal was to disappear from sight, to be the proverbial fly on the wall, to vanish from a would-be attacker.
    Shadow walking was a fairly easy technique in theory – it took loads of practice to make it work in reality. I stayed in the recesses and shadows, and kept the light in my opponent’s eye, the glare gave me excellent cover. I used everything in my environment to disguise my presence. Movement had to be sloth-like, even my breath became shallow and imperceptible. I colored my thoughts with the textures and colors around me, playing human chameleon. If I were standing in front of a tree, I used my imagination to project the rough texture, the grays, and the browns of the bark out in front of me.
    The masters of this technique – like in the Japanese Ninjitsu training —could disappear from sight. I was a few levels below mastery, but still. . .
    As a child, I practiced shadow walking all the time. I reigned as the hide-and-go-seek champion, and I got out of many a chore, and many a punishment, by perfecting this skill. When my parents told Master Wang about my antics, he would reprove me, but I always sensed a twinkle of amusement in his eye. Shadow walking served as an important arrow in my operative’s quiver; it got used frequently. And it impressed Striker – always a bonus.
     
    “Alex, would you go out and find me some coffee?” Striker didn’t really want coffee; we had just finished our Starbucks. He wanted to make me his subordinate, ensuring that the Dirts didn’t think of me as a threat.
    “Yes, sir.” I did my best “I’m a piece of fluff – don’t pay any attention to me” impersonation as I blinked vacantly at MacNamaly.
    “There’s a kitchen to the left, down the hall. I’ll take one, too. I drink mine black.”
    “Yes, sir.” I Mona Lisa smiled at Dirt Number Two.
    “Yeah, black,” he said.
    I hustled down the hall, grabbed the three mugs of coffee and hurried back with a tray. When I got to the conference room door, I tapped lightly and entered quietly, putting a mug and napkin in front of each of the men. I made sure to go around the table in such a way that I ended up close to the window. When I laid down the last mug and the