Do you know for a fact that this door is locked?
Good question. But surely Peter would’ve gone in this way, if it was.
Maybe he didn’t want to risk being seen by coming around the front. He approached the building from the back, remember? He may not have checked it.
She nodded, and reached to try the knob.
And the unlocked door clicked open.
Pete heard a clatter from behind the truck. Holy shit, had he—with Shayla’s help—actually called their bluff?
And yes, the two men behind the truck were arguing. They were trying to keep their voices down, but he could hear them. So could Stank.
“What the fuck you doing, man?”
“He said to put it down.” That was the one called Eddie.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Stank called.
“Kick the weapon over to me!” Pete ordered.
“Kick it over tome!” Stank demanded.
“Nobody move! FBI Agent Harriet Parker, Counterterrorism! You have exactly five seconds to surrender your weapons and agree to a deal, or we will lock you in Guantánamo and you will never get out.”
Holy fuck, Shayla had somehow gotten inside. She was standing there, across the room—just inside the shadow-filled doorway of some kind of front office as she continued to talk.
“Kick me your fucking gun!” Stank shouted at the idiots cowering behind the truck.
“The girl you have kidnapped is the daughter of U.S. Navy Admiral Lisa Nakamura,” Shayla said, as cool as if she were a real FBI negotiator, “who is connected to the arm of the military that runs Black Ops. She’s recently been the target of a terrorist cell, and unless you cooperate immediately, we will assume you are in league with ISIS—”
“Fucking shoot her!” Stank shouted. “Shoot them both! Don’t you know they don’t have any guns? They’re fucking unarmed and you’re gonna surrender tothem?”
Pete stood, too, hoping those idiots would see him as the greatest threat and aim for him instead of Shay. He held his hands positioned as if he had a weapon, because this goatfuck hadn’t gotten bad enough—he apparently had to bring pantomime into it, too. “Drop your weapons!” he roared. “Now!Shayla, get down!”
But the moment that he stood and she saw him, she stepped further into the room and flung something at him, hard—her handbag. It came sailing directly at his head.
As Pete caught Shay’s bag, he realized why it was so heavy.
She’d thrown him his handgun.
As he reached into the bag, one of the men behind the truck gave in to Stank’s demands, and his weapon came skittering out from under the truck, directly toward Stank. And Maddie.
Who surprised the hell out of him by pulling her hands free from where they’d been tied behind her back.
Maddie cut through the rope, and her world went into slow-mo.
She pulled her hands free, still clenching Dingo’s little corkscrew knife. But as much as she wanted to drive the blade into Stank’s throat, she knew it was dull now, so instead she used her elbow to slam him, hard, in the side of his head.
It didn’t stop him for long—just long enough for her to kick that weapon out into the middle of the room before he slammed her in the face and she went down in a burst of pain and flashing lights.
Stank dove for that handgun, so Pete dispatched him with a quick double-pop to the head, right through the bottom of Shayla’s handbag.
“Any further questions about whether or not we’re armed?” he called to the men behind the truck, as he scooped up that stray weapon and Maddie crawled over to Dingo. It was a rhetorical question, so he didn’t wait for a response as in the distance—finally—sirens wailed. “Slide your remaining weapons over here, then get down! On the floor, hands on your head, roll into the middle of the room, where I can see you. Do it!Now!”
The two surviving kidnappers did as Peter said.
“Shay, you okay?” he called, as Shayla emerged from the office, where she’d thrown herself after throwing him her handbag.
