BEYOND THE EMBERS OF VENGEANCE

The chemical hiss from the ceiling vents sounded like the breath of a serpent.

"Nitrogen displacement," Matteo said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, icy calm he reserved for lethal emergencies. "She’s pumping the oxygen out of the room. We have less than three minutes before we lose consciousness."

Anna felt the lightheadedness creeping into the edges of her vision, a subtle, sweet dizziness that made her limbs feel weighted with lead. "The glass... can we shoot it?"

"Reinforced ballistic polycarbonate," Matteo said, his hands already tearing open the maintenance access panel beneath the central server rack. "Rifle rounds would ricochet and kill us in this confined space."

He pulled three heavy copper grounding cables from the primary transformer, exposing the thick, unshielded wires.

"Anna," he said, turning to her with urgent eyes. "Take the terminal’s emergency battery unit. The lithium cell."

Anna fought the heavy fog in her brain, using the flat blade of her knife to pop the heavy battery out of the server tower. Her hands trembled, her lungs screaming for clean air that wasn't there. She stumbled, falling to her knees against the concrete floor.

Matteo caught her before her head struck the metal casing. He pulled her against his chest, his lips brushing her ear. "Stay with me, Anna. Focus on my voice."

"I'm here," she gasped, forcing her eyes wide. "What... what do we do with the battery?"

"We overload the fire suppression circuit," Matteo said.

He stripped the ends of the thick copper cables with his teeth, wrapping them directly around the lithium battery terminals. Sparks erupted in brilliant blue cascades, blinding in the red emergency light.

"Hold your breath!" Matteo roared.

He drove the sparking, short-circuiting battery directly into the main electrical junction box beneath the blast door's hydraulic control arm.

The surge was blinding.

The transformer exploded in a colossal blast of ozone and white light, frying the entire sub-station’s electrical grid. The hydraulic locks on the heavy blast door failed, the heavy steel pistons releasing with a violent hiss of escaping hydraulic fluid.

The door popped open three inches.

Fresh air rushed into the suffocating room like water into a desert. Anna dragged the freezing air into her burning lungs, coughing violently as Matteo kicked the heavy door wide with the heel of his combat boot.

He hauled her out into the corridor just as the server room behind them was consumed by an electrical fire.

They collapsed onto the wet concrete of the outer tunnel, their chests heaving in unison.

Anna pushed herself up, wiping soot from her mouth. She looked down at her hands. Clutched tightly in her fingers was the titanium drive—she had managed to rip it from the terminal before the overload.

Matteo smiled, a bloody, breathtaking grin through the grime on his face. "You never drop the prize, do you?"

"Never," Anna said, her eyes blazing.

Then, the tunnel echoed with the distinct sound of a motorboat engine echoing through the subterranean drainage canal fifty yards away.

Helena Vance was escaping toward Lake Michigan.

Anna stood up, racking the slide of her nine-millimeter pistol. "She’s on the water."