I kick the knife away from him and flip him over, pressing my knee to his back as dust fills my lungs.
I cover my mouth and nose with one arm and cough, hoping to get as much of it out as I can while the air continues to clear.
“You guys miss me?” Garrison Holt calls down with a sly smile on his face, a detonator in his hand.
“Took you long enough,” Sawyer calls back as he stands and stretches.
“Sorry, Cowboy and I had our hands full up here. You guys couldn’t have handled at least a few of them for us?” he jokes as he tosses a ladder down into the pit. “How long did it take you to break through those ropes?” he asks.
“Not long,” Sawyer calls out. “Less time than Tank here—” He turns toward Ryker, who is still sitting in his chair, chains around him. “Oh, sorry, big guy. Forgot you were in chains.”
“You let Sawyer beat you, Tank?” Garrison asks.
“Hardly. They just caught me first.”
“That’s because you used your brute strength to break out while Cap and I used sleuthing skills.” Sawyer continues to work on Ryker’s bindings, so I shift my attention back to the man pinned beneath me.
“Where is the girl, Killer?” I demand, grabbing a handful of his hair with one hand and pressing my own blade against his throat. I won’t actually kill him—not when the active threat is over—but he doesn’t know that.
Besides, there are plenty of ways to make someone talk without threatening their life.
“You’ll never make it out of here alive,” he growls.
“You seriously underestimate our resourcefulness,” Sawyer calls out.
Ryker eats up the ground between where he’d been chained and where I’m kneeling, so I straighten and flip the guy over onto his back. I remove Killer’s mask, revealing a glorified sorority boy in way over his head. Apparently, the government is recruiting straight out of college these days.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to let Tank here treat you like a chew toy,” I warn him.
In pure Ryker fashion, he growls, and Sorority Boy’s eyes widen almost comically.
“She’s upstairs. Top floor,” he sings like a canary. Beautiful.
“Great. Demo, care to do the honors?”
“Absolutely.”
“Smile,” I say as I hold his face up in front of mine so Garrison can snap a photo. Then, I throw him to the side. “Stay, and be a good boy. We have someone coming to collect you. If you run, we’ll find you. We love playing hide and seek. Don’t we, Tank?”
“My favorite,” he replies, then rears back and slams his fist into Sorority Boy’s face. He falls back, unconscious, and Ryker turns toward the ladder. “Just making sure he doesn’t run,” he adds when I shake my head at him.
Ryker is the first up the ladder, then Sawyer, then me. As I reach the top, Garrison pulls up the ladder. Rubble blocked the only door in or out, so without the ladder, he’ll have an interesting time trying to escape.
There are at least half a dozen men on the ground, scattered throughout what used to be a foyer. Given the bullet holes in the glass and the blood spatter on the floor, I know this was Cowboy’s doing. Considering how fast he is, he likely took the last one down before any of them even realized what was going on.
The death makes my stomach churn, but sometimes there is no other way. And in this war? It’s us or them. With a teenage girl added to the death toll should we fail.
Reaching down onto the floor, I lift a discarded weapon, then check it for ammunition. Since they relieved us of our weapons when they grabbed us, both Sawyer and Ryker do the same as I, arming themselves with whatever they can find.
“You know there was a door,” Sawyer tells Garrison. “You didn’t have to blow a hole in the place.”
Garrison shrugs. “It would have taken too long to find it. Besides, then I wouldn’t have had the amazing entrance I got.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope they didn’t hear the explosion and kill the girl.” I start toward the stairs. “Cowboy, do you read?” I ask through the earpiece our lovely hosts didn’t check for when they searched us. Lungs still burning from the rubble, I cough. As is protocol, we’d gone radio silent the moment the three of us were abducted.
“Loud and clear, Cap,” Weston Hayes, my oldest friend, replies. After the last few hours, his smooth southern drawl is a welcome sound. I’m far from being the rank of Captain—especially since I technically no longer serve in the Navy—but it’s a nickname that’s been with me for nearly a decade. “Things are quiet out here. I took out the two guards at the top of the stairs. You should be clear going up, but I can’t get a visual on the girl. All the windows are closed up.”
His tone is strained, and I know it’s because this mission is hitting close to home. It’s that way for all of us, but for a guy who lost his younger sister at the same age this girl is, he’s struggling. I only hope this has a happier ending than the tragic story that ripped apart what remained of his family after his dad abandoned them.
