I glanced at the kitchen island, which looked completely normal again, but instantly discarded the idea of sending Aunt Halle and the boys back in there. The whole reason we were in the house was to get them out of the situation. That’s what we needed to do, and we needed to do it fast before the new men made it inside the house.
“Out the back door,” Erik called softly. “Quickly now.”
As we shuffled silently toward the mudroom, I could see more than four sets of headlights out front. In a matter of minutes, we’d be surrounded.
Chapter 12
Daniel
“Do you think he’ll talk?” Chance asked as we pulled our gear out of the cabin.
“With enough incentive,” I replied, ignoring the trembling in my hands as I loaded my rifle.
“He’ll talk,” Dalton said firmly. “There’s an explanation.”
“Can’t wait to hear his excuses,” Chance muttered, with a humorless laugh. “Should be a hoot.”
“I didn’t say excuses,” Dalton countered. “I said an explanation. He’s involved for a reason.”
“Who gives a fuck what his reasons are?” Ian said angrily.
“Focus,” his father said calmly, barely glancing at him.
I wasn’t pleased that Dalton had decided to bring his kid along, but I wasn’t about to argue about it. If he wanted to get Junior’s feet wet on something this important, it wasn’t any of my business. I trusted Chance and only Chance to have my back with this.
We’d learned the hard way that the only people we could trust in this life were our family. I was more than happy to have allies, but when it came down to it, I didn’t trust any of them.
“Let’s get this over with,” Chance said with a sigh.
I followed him as he broke into a jog across the field we’d landed in. We were just over a mile from the Adamson property, and the air was thick and wet coming off the ocean. When we finally slowed to a walk, my entire body was damp from sweat and the moisture in the air. Even my beard had little beads of water that I had to brush away.
Adamson’s house was at the top of a small dune, and it was massive. The side that faced the windows was basically an entire wall of glass, but the rest of it looked like any other mansion built in the last thirty years. There were three entry points I noticed right away—the front door and the garage door that opened up to the driveway on the top floor, and a door on the ground floor that led out onto the sand. I was pretty sure there must have been another door on the opposite side of the house from where we were, just by looking at how the house was built, but since we were working with a time limit, I didn’t bother to investigate.
We could find the egress points once we were inside.
Posting up in a half circle around the eastern side of the house, we counted seven Vampires patrolling and watching those entrances. There were two black SUVs in the driveway, and the house was lit, but filmy curtains concealed what was happening inside.
“Danny and I have the four to the north,” Chance said after a few minutes, his voice lower than a whisper through my comms. “You have the other three?”
“Affirmative,” Dalton breathed.
Working with my brothers was always a little bit of a surprise, though why it should be after a hundred years, I had no idea. We knew each other’s moves before we made them, and the entire task ended up being far easier than we expected. I incapacitated the Vampire by the driveway entrance by simply knocking him out with the butt of my pistol. Chance choked the next with the strap of the kid’s own rifle. When he moved on tothe third, he was grinning like he was having the time of his life. Simultaneously, I moved to the fourth, who was a bit more on top of things than the first ones had been, and actually saw me coming. He fought back, but was ultimately pretty ineffectual. He also hadn’t called out to his teammates. A rookie mistake.
Unfortunately, he was also huge, and dragging him into the trees to tie him up was a fucking pain in the ass.
“Feels like they’re getting younger and younger,” Chance said as we stared at the four Vampires tied to the trees.
“They are,” Dalton replied from behind us. “Used to be that you had to be thirty to join Command. Now it’s twenty, and they make them security guards or admin clerks at the training center. It’s bullshit.”
I glanced at Ian, who had to be older than twenty.
“I won’t work for Command,” he said flatly, his eyes dark.
“None of my sons will,” Dalton added.
We left the Vampires in the trees and made our way back to the house. The front door was open, and we walked right in. Moving silently, we made our way through the foyer and checked rooms as we followed voices downstairs to a large room overlooking the water.
There was no security inside.
