There would be hush money to pay. Cleanup to remove any linkage of the events to Shiva and the Mira Foundation. They had to boost security now around the island, find some way to locate that woman. But the worst of it was that those children had seen someone they trusted shot and killed! They’d been forcibly separated from everyone they knew. That trauma would last years, would impede his efforts to build trust…

“We may have a sighting of Lane.”

Shiva whirled. It was Hayes, the commander of the squad Shiva had brought with him to Vietnam. “What?”

“We just intercepted a message internal to a group of bounty hunters,” Hayes went on. “They believe Lane is in a tourist club in Saigon right now. They’re moving in to get him.”

“Then we have to get there first,” Shiva said.

Chapter 40: Hell

40

HELL

Saturday October 27th

Kade sat at the bar with Feng and watched the club heat up.

The crowd grew thicker, the music louder. Then the DJ was there, on stage. The same one as last night. Asian, muscular, with short black hair and mirrored shades and a dark T-shirt and jeans that showed off his physique. The go-go dancers climbed up to the stage as well, all in glossy red tonight – boots, hot pants, pasties, streaks through their hair. Red devil horns and shiny red devil wings topped it off.

The smoke machine kicked in, covering the floor of the club with a foot-thick layer of smoke. Lights turned the smoke red, made the tendrils of it that crept up people’s legs into an illusion of flames.

The music faded out, the crowd stilled, and then the DJ started in. He kicked off the set with a slow build, a flux piece that started at the downtempo end of the spectrum and then grew deeper, faster, harder, until, just minutes in, it was epic, and the crowd was dancing.

Kade felt a small smile grow across his face. Rangan would love this.

Then he realized what he’d thought. Ilya would have loved this too. And the smile faded. It was 10pm here. Mid-morning on a Saturday on the East Coast. He’d check on Holtzmann when they left the club, make sure the man was on track.

Then red smoke rose in a thick cloud from the stage, and he caught his breath in anticipation, and then she was in the club, the NJ, the Nexus jockey. He felt her mind even as the smoke obscured her. And she was as glorious as she’d been the night before, sending out waves of exultation and dance and near hallucinatory visions of how the club looked to her, from up on stage, singing, raising her arms above the demonic figures crowding the club. Tonight, Heaven looked like a piece of Hell. She loved it.