“Alphabet,” he murmured, “give us the nearest likely matches on Nico’s direction.”
“I’m on it,” Alphabet said. “There are sixteen containers in that line with manual overrides like the one you just popped. But only three had recent access pings.”
“Mark the closest.”
A faint waypoint pinged in my ear. Ten o’clock. Thirty yards.
Perfect distance for trouble.
We reached the mouth of the next lane—a long stretch shadowed between rows of blue containers. Bones raised a hand, one finger tapping downward.
Hold.
I froze.
Because down the lane, half-hidden by the steel shadows, a silhouette leaned against a container corner—too still to be a worker, too aware to be anything except a problem.
Bones jerked his chin left. I angled right.
We approached like closing jaws.
The guy didn’t see us at first—he was staring toward the container we’d just come from, shoulders tight, hand twitching toward his waistband every few seconds. Watching. Waiting.
Looking for us.
Looking for Nico.
Rage crawled up my spine.
Bones was five feet from him when the guy finally sensed movement. He spun?—
Too slow.
Bones slammed him against the container harder than strictly necessary, one forearm pinning his throat, the other ripping a pistol from the bastard’s belt and tossing it aside like a piece of trash.
I grabbed the front of his jacket before he could drop to the ground, hauling him upright. “Bad day to be working for kidnappers, amigo.”
He spit at me.
It hit my chest.
I smiled—the kind of smile that used to scare my old CO. “Oh, you’re gonna regret that.”
“Lunchbox,” Bones warned quietly.
Right. We didn’t have time for dental rearrangement.
I twisted the guy’s arm behind him, hard enough to make him gasp. Bones leaned in close.
“Where are they moving the children?”
His breathing hitched, panic flashing across his face, but he clamped his mouth shut in defiance.
Bones didn’t hesitate. His knee jammed into the guy’s thigh, dead center on the nerve bundle. Not enough to break anything.
Just enough to convince him Bones had a map to all the places hecouldbreak.
The hostile choked, sagging in my grip.
