“You’re sitting on the wrong bank!” Khaki’s voice was angry in Xander’s earpiece. “They’re hitting the one in the building we’re set up on. The bank on Jackson Street.”
Thompson swore, then ordered his people to move in while at the same time yelling at the local PD to seal off the perimeter and demanding Khaki give him more info. But Xander was already getting a sinking feeling in his gut. A feeling that told him the FBI and everyone else had been royally played.
“Khaki, figure out what the hell is happening and give me a sitrep,” he said into his mic.
Even though his first instinct was to stay out of this and let the FBI go down in flames, Xander was up and running toward the far side of the roof. As he raced across it, he gave hand signals to the other guys with him—converge on the new target. Max and Hale were catching up to him before he even reached the edge of the roof.
As he neared the low wall that ran around the perimeter of the roof, Xander shifted, thrilling at the surge of power racing through him as his leg and core muscles twitched and thickened. His boot hit the edge of the wall and he propelled himself forward as hard as he could, ignoring the height he was leaping from and how far he needed to go to make it to the other building. He’d scouted the surrounding rooftops before settling into position earlier and knew that he could make this jump, even with all the tactical gear he was wearing.
From his scouting, he also knew that this was the fastest way to get where they needed to be. Three blocks west by rooftop, followed by a quick scramble down the fire escape would put him on Jackson Street. Then it would be a straight shot to the bank on the back side of the building where Khaki and Alex were set up.
Xander sailed over the matching low wall on the adjacent building and hit the roof in a tumbling roll, cradling his M4 to his chest to protect it. He was on his feet within seconds. He had five hundred feet of rooftop to cover on this building before reaching the next gap he had to leap over. He hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty feet when he heard Max and Hale make their jumps. One of them—Max probably—shouted just before he hit the graveled roof. At any other time, Xander would have been worried about someone looking up and seeing three big-ass guys in full tactical gear jumping across a twenty-foot gap between buildings, but with a bank robbery in progress, he didn’t think that’d be a problem.
The robbers must have figured out someone leaked their plans to the FBI. Yet, instead of abandoning Dallas completely, they’d switched to another bank positioned just outside the textbook perimeter of the first target. Not only were these guys smart—that prior military-slash-law enforcement background theory was looking better by the second—they were ballsy. There was no other reason to hit an alternate target so close to the first one other than to show the FBI that they could.
“The suspects have reached the street,” Khaki reported over the FBI frequency. “There are six men that I can see, all heavily armed. Two black SUVs are moving in from the end of the street to pick them up.”
“I have agents converging on your location,” Thompson told her. “Sniper, can you engage? I need the suspects pinned down for a few minutes.”
“Negative,” Alex replied. “The target zone is full of civilians and it’s chaos down there. I do not have a clear shot.”
“Dammit!” Thompson swore. “Take the shot anyway. Shoot the SUV’s tires. Just slow them down.”
It was Xander’s turn to curse. He opened his mouth to countermand Thompson’s order, but Khaki beat him to it.
“We can’t do that. Even if we hit the target, the chances of a through-and-through ricochet hitting a bystander is too high.”
Max and Hale had caught up with Xander and all three of them cleared the alley and hit the next rooftop in perfect sync. Xander sped up and pulled ahead of his teammates, wanting to be the first one on the fire escape. He had to get eyes on the situation, because something told him it was going bad really fast.
Thompson was ordering Alex to shoot just as tires squealed nearby.
“One SUV is away. DPD cruiser in pursuit,” Khaki reported. “The other one is still on the curb. Looks like they’re waiting for someone. Additional cruisers are blocking either end of Jackson.”
“I’ll have agents on the scene in ten seconds,” Thompson told her. “Whatever you do, don’t let that second SUV out.”
Xander hit the top of the fire escape so hard he almost flew right off of it. He took the steep metal stairs three at a time, leaping the last fifteen feet into the alley rather than using the drop-down ladder. He raced out of the alley and sprinted up Jackson, pushing his way through the crowd of terrified people running in the opposite direction. He was still two blocks away when he heard gunfire.
This was going to be a bloodbath.
“Dammit, Thompson!” Khaki yelled. “Tell your people to stop shooting. There are at least twenty civilians behind the same row of cars the suspects are using as cover, and your agents are punching holes right through them.”
But no orders to cease fire ever came. Xander put on more speed, or at least as much as he could with all the people running away from the scene and blocking his path.
Xander heard Alex curse.
“Two of the suspects are using kids as shields. I can’t get a shot at them, and the frigging SUV is armored and has solid run-flat tires. Without armor-piercing rounds, I’m not going to be able do a damn thing to stop these guys.”
“The feds are going to hit the kids,” Khaki ground out in exasperation in his SWAT earpiece. “I’m going down there to get them.”
“Negative. Stand down.” Xander’s heart shoved so hard up into his throat he almost had to stop running. “That’s an order!”
Khaki didn’t answer. Xander hoped it wasn’t because she was doing something she shouldn’t, but as he reached the DPD cruisers barricading Jackson Street, he saw her rappelling down the side of the bank building from five floors up.
What the hell was she doing?
The answer to that was obvious as she dropped down behind the bad guys—and right into the FBI’s target zone. Luckily, some of the feds realized she’d entered the fray and stopped shooting. But others seemed completely oblivious.
Xander sped toward her, shouting for a cease-fire, watching in terror as bullets continued to rip through the line of cars in front of Khaki. Werewolves were tough as nails, but a lucky shot could kill them just as easily as it could a normal human. For all they knew, female werewolves might not have the same healing powers as their male counterparts.
