Dark Angel Skin Game

IMAGER IS EVERYTHING SECTOR THREE,11:00 P.M. TUESDAY,MARCH 2,2021 Like a relentless boxer, rain beat down on the city, first jabbing with sharp needles, then smacking Seattle with huge fat drops that hit like haymakers, the barrage punctuated by the ominous rumble of thunder and the eerie flash of lightning. An unmarked black car drew to a stop in a rat-infested Sector Three alley, the rain rattling the metal roof like machine-gun fire. Two men in dark suits climbed out, to be instantly drenched, though neither seemed to notice. Each wore a radio earplug with a short microphone bent toward his mouth. Sage Thompson--the man who'd emerged from the passenger's side--was relieved that the headsets, at least, seemed to be waterproof. In their coat pockets, each man carried one of the new portable thermal imagers that, just this week, had become standard equipment. Thompson-- barely six feet, almost skinny at 180 pounds--wondered if water-tightness was among the gizmo's various high-tech bells and whistles. Water sluiced down the alley in a torrent that seemed to express the sky's anger, eventually bubbling over the edge of a rusty grate maybe ten yards in front of them. Thompson was forced to jump the stream and his feet nearly slid out from under him as he landed and bumped into a triangle of garbage cans, sending them crashing into each other, creating a din that rivaled the storm's, his hands flying wide to help maintain his balance. Then his hands dropped back to his sides, the one holding his flashlight clanging off the imager in his coat pocket, the other moving to make sure his pistol was still secure in its holster on his belt. The hefty man who'd been driving--Cal Hankins--shone his flashlight in Thompson's face, huffed once, and eased around a dumpster that looked like it hadn't been emptied since before the Pulse. Moving slowly ahead, their flashlights sweeping back and forth over the brick hulk in front of them, the two men finally halted in front of what had once been a mullioned window. The interior of the six-story brick building--an abandoned warehouse, Thompson surmised--seemed a black hole waiting to devour them without so much as a belch. Next to Thompson, his partner Hankins swept a flashlight through one of the broken panes, painting the rainy night with slow, even strokes. Darkness surrendered only brief glimpses of the huge first-floor room as it swallowed up the light. "You sure this is the right place?" Hankins asked gruffly. There was no fear in the man's voice--Thompson sensed only that his partner didn't want his time wasted. At forty, bucket-headed Hankins--the senior partner of the duo-- wore his blondish hair in a short brush cut that revealed only a wisp or two of gray. His head rested squarely on his shoulders, without apparent benefit of a neck, and he stood nearly six-three, weighing in (Thompson estimated) at over 230. But the man wasn't merely fat--there was enough gristle and muscle and bone in there to make Hankins formidable. Still, Thompson knew their boss--that nasty company man, Ames White, a conscienceless yuppie prick if there ever was one--had been all over Hankins about his weight and rode the older guy mercilessly about it. Though he knew better than to ever say it out loud, Thompson considered White the worst boss in his experience--which was saying something. White was smart, no doubting that, but he had a sarcastic tongue and a whiplash temper that Thompson had witnessed enough times to know he should keep his mouth shut and his head low. "This is the right place, all right," Thompson said, raising his voice over the battering rain. "Dispatch said the thermal imager team picked up a transgenic in the marCollins, Max Allan is the author of 'Dark Angel Skin Game' with ISBN 9780345451835 and ISBN 034545183X.