Just barely.
“Roger, Foxtrot Three out.”
After clearing the wave of aggressors, the next group hesitated, staring at us with panicked eyes. Scanning the room, uncertain what to do.
“Foxtrot is preparing to engage with the snipers out here. After that, we’re moving in on Helix. Message sent,” someone from Hollis’s team shared as another man worked up the courage to attack.
Wrong move.
I twisted his wrist and broke it clean, dropping him.
I checked the ballroom timer, then my watch.
21:59.
Echo Team and Trevor would be breaching at 2200 hours. Visual contact made on Beau an hour ago. A lamb sent to the slaughter by Rhett.
The second I returned my gaze to the room, a new round of men looking to get beat up engaged.
They were sloppier. Desperate.
And then the crowd turned on itself. No cohesion. All fear and confusion.
Cracks of bone. Gasps. Screams.
Tables flipped. Bodies crashed into the decor. Furniture became shields and weapons.
Suppressed shots from outside the ballroom sounded. Closer this time.
“This is Foxtrot Three. Snipers down.”
Ryder was back to being behind me again, covering my six as I tackled a wiry guy with a jagged fork.
I swept his leg, then knocked the guy unconscious as he attempted to fork me to death.
“Lobby’s chaos,” someone on Hollis’s team reported as I hammered a guy’s jaw with my elbow. “Civilians are clear. Staff too. Helix is cannibalizing itself. Plan worked.”
“Good. Status on police?” Hollis asked her team.
“Five minutes out,” someone answered. “So we need to be gone in four.”
Before we could answer, Reed’s voice came over the line. “There’s a problem. I’m in the primary interface, but he split the encryption. Every thread loops back.”
“Meaning?” I ducked behind a flipped-over table as a woman joined the fight, launching her damn stiletto at me.
“It’s a logic trap,” Reed answered.
Hollis this time: “A logic-based kill switch? Was he expecting us to find it? Giving us a way to beat this?”
“Down to fifteen seconds,” Reed warned.
The red digits kept ticking. Everyone stopped moving.
They all realized the same thing: The bomb was still alive and so were we.
No one was safe.
“Wait!” I shouted when I uncrossed the wires in my head and realized what was going on. I jumped up from behind the table. “It’s a bluff. Another damn decoy.”
