“We’re trying, but we lost the relay again on quadrant four. Could be a glitch. Could be a jam. Could be something else.”
“I hate when you say things like that.” Lark scanned rooftops, windows, corners
“Working on pulling satellite override,” Jupiter said.
“Wes, you’re closest, can you confirm visual on Alvarez?” Lark asked.
Nothing but static…
“Moose, come in, Moose,” she said.
“Following one man,” Moose said. “Lost the other. He turned back toward the meeting location.”
“Break!Break!” Sloan cut in. “Movement on the rooftops. Multiple. With weapons.”
“Thor, you see what I’m seeing?” Kawan asked. “Because that looks more like a discussion than an exchange.”
“It sure does,” Thor said. “But I also can’t tell if that chat is friendly or turning into something else. However, Bradford’s backing away, shaking his head.”
Lark felt the shift in her gut—an old, familiar heat flooding her limbs. Her pulse increased. Her fingers twitched. “Get our assets out, and abort the mission,” she said. “Specs. Jupiter, can you be our eyes and get in the SUV and head in this direction?”
“Easier said than done,” Jupiter said with tension laced to every syllable. Something that Lark wasn’t used to from that man. “Half our feeds are now in a loop, like in that movieSpeed,when the bus drives around in a circle at the airport.I used to love that fucking movie,” he mumbled. “They hijacked the surveillance. Fuckers knew exactly what we were doing, and where we were doing it, but we’re packing up. We’ll make it work.”
“We need to remember they don’t know about us,” Kawan said with a little too much excitement. Sometimes she wondered if he had more of a death wish than she did. Not that she truly had one, but she did like jumping from perfectly good airplanes.
“Lark, both Bradford and Bretton are standing under the tunnel at the north end while Torin is back up toward the south,” Thor reported. “Something’s about to?—”
A low pop echoed in her ear, followed by a wet gurgling sound.
“I’m hit,” Alverez’s voice barely crackled across the comms.
Lark held her breath waiting for anything other than static to fill her ear, but nothing came.
Then Jupiter’s voice, grim, “Movement just behind Alverz’s post. I can’t confirm identity.”
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The shots muffled. A silencer. But it cracked through the comms like a whip.
Lark’s body moved before her brain could catch up—shouldering her rifle, repositioning her scope, scanning windows, alleyways, bodies.
More shots.
“Fuck.” Thor tossed his book and hit the pavement.
Screams echoed in the market. People scattered. Chaos filled the streets as people shoved one another, ducking and weaving to get out of harm's way.
“Specs, initiate fallback protocol,” Lark said.
“We had Torin for a couple of seconds on one of the feeds before he disappeared,” Jupiter said. “No trace of him, Bradford, or Bretton anywhere since I got a couple of our cams back. ETA, ten minutes.”
Ka-boom!
Lark’s heart pounded. The earth rumbled under her body. Her eyes locked on the town square—and that’s when she saw it.
Large clouds of black smoke billowed from the chapel roof.
And a flash of movement—black tactical gear, not theirs.
