“He does,” I agreed. “He did not have one yesterday.”
Beside me, already grimy and bloodied from the guards we’d taken out to get this far, Ranger curled his lip, discontent radiating from him. “Let me guess. You’ve got one too, right? Hidden up your fucking arse?”
Not quite. It was strapped to my leg, but I didn’t want to use it. The silencer had broken and the port wasn’t a remote field in the Devonshire countryside. Around here, a firefight would be heard, and I lacked enthusiasm for the complications that wouldbring.In and out. I had told Jake this would be simple, saving our energy and resources for the wider conflict bearing down on us, and it would be so.
I took a breath, tempering the adrenaline pumping my blood. Slowing it with practised ease. I was a mercenary, not a soldier, but I was built for war. My whole life, I’d known nothing else. Sweat and rain dripped from my brow. Blood too, if I thought about it enough.
I didn’t.
I swiped it with my forearm and gave orders to the men around us to fan out and block the exits, keeping Ranger with me.
To protect him?
No. Ranger was a strong fighter. Fast and furious, with a penchant for kicking hard enough to puncture a man’s kidney. He needed nothing from me, unless the target in my sights got the chance to raise his weapon. Bullets did not care how well a man fought. Or that I did not want Ranger to die.
“Get down,” I murmured, leaving his crude question unanswered. “And stay down until we reach him.”
Ranger nodded. “Left leg?”
“On my signal.”
There was no time to hold his gaze. I pushed away that I wanted to. I pushedeverythingaway except the target before me, and we hit the ground, crawling through gritty puddles, avoiding the surveillance cameras Jake had glitched before we’d engaged. Up here, our enemies were not illiterate Crows. It was not unthinkable that someone inside would notice. That they already had.
They could shoot him where he lies.
On weathered tarmac, followingmyorders.
I could not name the emotion that spurred me to crawl faster. It was not fear—the ability to be truly afraid had left me a longtime ago. But this feeling, it resonated the same and I moved with a sharper focus.
We were metres from the target, the man with the gun now closer to me than Ranger.
Slowing, I raised my hand.
In sync, Ranger eased to a stop, his savage stare a beacon in the dark, locked on me. Intense. Profound. And of course, in perfect contradiction with the smirk twisting his lips.
I tipped my head.Ready?
He bared his whiter-than-white teeth, his face more visible to me with his hair tied back.It’s time.Let’s go.
Indeed. I dropped my hand and we struck together, rising from the ground so fast that the guard did not hear us coming. He did not see us, and he felt nothing but the disarming sensation of his legs giving way beneath him, powerless to the impact of our silent assault.
He crumpled.
I killed him, and I did not feel bad about it. These men had trafficked children. Exploited and discarded them.Murderedthem. They deserved to die more painfully than I had time for. So we killed them all, moving swiftly through the port outbuilding, my gloved hands and Ranger’s fast feet more than enough as my fears of detection proved unfounded.
A dead man sprawled before me. A Sambini soldier, like the others, despite the trafficking routes through the port falling into the hands of a cartel alliance six months ago.
Interesting.
But not unexpected. The Sambini clan were snakes. Disloyal. Dishonest.Opportunistic. If my suspicions of them courting the Eastern European mobs had been baseless before, they were not now.
Smells like Aldea.
We collected the bodies and loaded them to be delivered to a place our enemy would find them. A warning. Amessage: the port was ours. For now, at least, but that was a problem for another day.
The adrenaline of the vicious fight began to fade. Battle wounds made themselves known, but I paid them no heed. What was a little pain? A bruise. A scrape. It was nothing to me. Ranger concerned me more.
He’s bleeding.
