Page 2 (2/2)

Oh God, she didn’t want to die

Marko cla it in place while he forced the handkerchief flush against her nose andit impossible for her to escape

Dizziness Nausea Black specks Nothing

“Shko,” Marko ordered his acco him toward the driver’s seat

The van screeched off, headed to hell

2

Wall Street, Manhattan, New York

23 February

Friday, 10:00 pm local time

Another late night

Aidan Devereaux leaned back in his office chair for a brief moment of peace

There weren’t many of those at Heck the labyrinthine coest investment bank in the world The company relied on its operations to extract billions in profits by trading everything from stocks and bonds to options and co in the world was traded without flowing through their book of business They would take any side of any transaction if there was a buck to beshort of perfection in its communications netas acceptable And it was his departuarantee that perfection

No one understood that better than Aidan As a former Marine, he had seen men live or die based on communication failures of all types—equipment, procedures, and people And he had learned how to prevent all of theht him well

Most of his ti out fire after fire No sooner would one “near miss” end when the next one would flare up in another part of the world Last week, it was the loss of a critical data circuit in Singapore that placed the Far East operations at risk of slow transaction processing, or wo

rse, a co operations Aidan knew the drill He’d i hi on extra capacity in Tokyo should it be necessary Fortunately, the worst hadn’t happened, as his teaapore issue