She and Alex used the neighborhood houses as cover as they moved around to the back of the suspect’s house. In broad daylight like this, it would be hard to sneak up on this guy, but they had to try.
As they got into position, she heard Trevor giving status updates to Xander in her earpiece. It didn’t sound like it was going very well. According to Trevor, the kidnapper was starting to lose it.
Khaki dropped to one knee near the window closest to her and peeked through the blinds into the bedroom. Alex motioned with his hand, pointing at himself, then the window, then her. He’d go through the window first while she covered him. She nodded.
Her hand tightened around her M4 as she waited for Xander to give the order to move in. This was her first real SWAT mission. She didn’t count the bank job because that hadn’t been a planned situation and there hadn’t been a hostage. This was different. There was a little girl in there who would likely die if they screwed up.
Khaki took a breath and let it out slowly, forcing herself to relax. If they ended up in the basement, she had to be ready to let her eyes shift. She replayed Xander’s words from their lesson.
Pictureyourselfrunningbarefootthroughtheforest. Now imagine yourself opening your eyes wider, letting every flicker of light in to fill thedarkness.
Khaki felt her eyes start to shift when she heard a man yelling from inside the house quickly followed by gunshots, breaking glass, and the clank of bullets hitting the cars along the street. Her first thought was of Xander and the guys who’d been heading through the front, and she sagged with relief when she heard him give the order to kill the power and enter the house.
Alex launched himself through the window, taking out the glass, most of the framework, and the curtains on the other side. Khaki leaped in after him, covering him as he got to his feet and tossed the curtains aside.
Khaki heard other windows breaking as she and Alex headed out of the bedroom and down a long hallway toward the center of the house. The other members of the squad would be moving in the same direction soon enough.
They’d just reached the end of the hallway when a middle-aged man with a beard and a shotgun came running. He glanced at her and Alex, eyes wide and crazy as he pivoted and headed down another hallway. No wonder Trevor thought Reynolds was losing it. The guy didn’t only sound insane; he looked it.
She gave chase, putting on speed when she realized he was heading for the basement. Dammit!
“He’s going to the basement,” she yelled, following Reynolds down the stairs.
Khaki let her nose lead her until she felt her eyes shift. The sound of a trigger being squeezed made her slam on the brakes, and she threw herself backward as the roar of a shotgun filled the tight stairwell.
Behind her, Alex must have sensed what she was about to do because he jumped back at the same time. The shotgun blew a ragged hole about the size of her head in the sheetrock wall beside her. Luckily, Reynolds missed her by a figurative mile. The debris from the sheetrock hadn’t even hit the floor before she was on her feet and running again, Alex right behind her.
She reached the basement only a few steps behind Reynolds. Unable to see as well as they could in the dark, he seemed more interested in not running into anything than in shooting at her and Alex again. That was okay with Khaki.
Unfortunately, she didn’t see the little girl anywhere. But they’d caught Reynolds. It would just be a matter of time before they rescued Melissa.
Khaki reached out to grab Reynolds by the shirt when he simply dropped out of sight. She skidded to a halt just in time to keep from falling into a ragged hole in the concrete floor.
“What the hell?” Alex muttered as he came around from behind her to see why she’d stopped.
She didn’t have an answer. All she knew was that it was so dark she had trouble seeing anything in it—even with her eyes shifted.
Boots echoed on the stairs. A moment later Xander was beside her.
“What have we got?” he asked.
Cooper squatted beside the hole. “We got a tunnel rat, that’s what we got.”
Then, without another word, he hopped into the hole.
Khaki didn’t think. She simply let her eyes open as wide as they would go to let in as much light as possible, and dropped into the blackness after Cooper.
It was a short trip to the bottom. She looked around, trying to get her bearings as she moved away from the hole so the other guys could join them.
“Holy crud,” Becker whispered. “It’s a freaking maze down here.”
Khaki silently agreed. They’d landed in the central hub of a network of tunnels that Reynolds had dug under his house. From where she was standing, she could see five main tunnels running off in different directions with smaller tunnels branching off from the main routes. Sheets of plywood and four-by-four beams shored up the ceiling and walls, and little trickles of dirt drifted from every gap.
“What the hell is that smell?” Max asked, covering his nose with his gloved hand.
Khaki didn’t blame him. Her nose had started to burn the moment she’d hit the ground. She’d never smelled anything like it, which was saying a lot. She’d spent her time in a lot of drug dens and meth labs out in Lakefront, and while the odor down here was similar, it definitely wasn’t the same.
“I don’t know,” Xander said. “But let’s not spend any more time down here than we have to. Spread out in teams of two. We need to find Reynolds before he gets to that little girl.”
