Biometric safes were easy to crack.
Hardin laughed. “Clever.”
Jones and Segal would know the moment Hardin entered the room. The security camera would ping their phones, and they would know Thor was in trouble. They would act to keep the components and the rest of the people on station safe, no matter what happened to Thor and Samantha.
But Thor needed to hurry. “You got what you wanted. Where the hell is she?”
Hardin pointed Thor’s pistol at his chest. “Move.”
Thor walked out of the office, careful to keep Hardin in his peripheral vision. “Do you think you’ll get away with this? There’s nowhere to run. You’re already at the top of our list of suspects. They’ll catch you.”
“I have buyers willing to do almost anything to get their hands on this. They’ll come for me.” He gave Thor a shove. “Head out the emergency exit.”
“Give me your parka.” If Thor was going to save Samantha, he’d need a way to keep her warm.
“No way. I can’t even the odds like that. You’ll have to do without.”
Hardin intended for him to die, too.
Thor pushed open the door, sucked in a breath at the blast of cold air, the wind chill cutting through his clothing. He felt the barrel of his pistol against his back. “If you pull that trigger, everyone on station will hear it.”
“Not if I close this door first.”
Thor didn’t hesitate but jumped over the stair rail to the ice two stories below just as the shot rang out. Pain sliced through his left shoulder.
Shit!
He hit the ice hard, rolled beneath the stairs, leaving blood on the snow. “Where is she, Hardin, you fucker!”
Bam! Bam!
One of the shots creased Thor’s thigh, the sting barely registering over the blistering chill as he crawled beneath the cover of the station. “Where is she, Hardin?”
“Fuck you!” Hardin stood at the top of the stairs for a moment as if trying to decide whether to come down and finish Thor. Then he turned and opened the door. “I hit you! I see your blood on the snow! You’re done, Isaksen, and so is Sam!”
The fucker walked back inside, shutting and locking the door behind him.
* * *
Steve shovedthe pistol into the back of his jeans, locked the door, and ran back to his office. He’d gotten the bastard. He’d put at least one bullet in him, maybe two. It didn’t matter how big or tough Isaksen thought he was. No man could survive bullets and temps of eighty below for long.
He logged onto his computer and into the station’s emergency control panel, then punched in his admin code and sealed the B1 Life Pod to keep the two surviving Cobra guys from getting out. Just to be safe, he locked the station down. Every entrance, even the doors to the service arches and ice tunnels, was secured now. If Isaksen didn’t die from his gunshot wounds, he’d die of hypothermia, trying to find a way back inside.
Either way, Thor Isaksen was a dead man.
Steve stripped out of his parka, drew a breath to compose himself, and made his way downstairs toward the Cobra guys’ rooms. He ought to kill all three of those Cobra assholes, but he couldn’t risk that. If Isaksen had lied to him, he would take the other two, one at a time, until someone told him what he needed to know.
They’d fooled him. He’d believed the Golden Horde components were secure in his office safe this entire time. He had reached out to his contact, told him he had the goods when all he’d had was junk.
Fucking assholes!
If the components had been in his safe, he wouldn’t have had to kill Sam or Isaksen. He could have taken the package—that’s what the Cobra guys called it—and handed it over to his contact at any time.
Who gives a shit?
Steve was smarter than all of them and good at thinking on his feet. Every time something had gone wrong, he’d found a way around it. He’d brought the satellite down to take his revenge against Titan. Then, thanks to Cobra, he’d seen a way to make some money by selling the technology to a power that would appreciate it—and his skill.
God, he would love to see his former supervisors’ faces at Titan when they found outhewas behind the satellite hack. He’d brought their pet project crashing down, and now he was going to sell it to their enemies and pocket millions. Living in exile for the rest of his life was a small price to pay for destroying the men who’d fired him, taken his research, and gotten rich by selling it to the Department of Defense.