Jake kept his eyes glued to Misty’s laptop over her shoulder, hoping to catch sight of something that might tell him how many people they were dealing with even as she told Jes and Caleb over the radio to be ready to move. They needed to move fast on the farmhouse once Darby arrived at the hotel. Ruthless efficiency dictated he’d almost certainly order the hostages executed the moment he got access to the Bilderberg people. Once he had that, he no longer needed anything from the children’s parents.
“I heard someone heading down to the floor below the loading dock,” Forrest said. “I’m going to check it out.”
“Stay alert,” Jake told him.
“Copy that,” Forrest replied.
Jake frowned as another video camera cut in and out. “What’s your status, Harley?”
“The guests are having lunch, blissfully unaware of any threat.”
He knew Harley didn’t like the idea of using the Bilderberg people as bait. For the record, neither did Jake.
It was now clear why Darby had gone to such great lengths with his convoluted scheme to kidnap all those kids. With the information they had, his crew was slipping through the hotel like the place didn’t have any security at all. No camera caught sight of them, no locked door slowed them down, no security guard even saw them.
“Dammit, Misty,” Jake muttered when the outages of the hotel’s security camera system approached the meeting room, a sure sign Darby was about to make his move. “Can’t you do something to give me eyes on these people? I need to know what we’re up against.”
“I’m trying.”
Misty rested her hand on the laptop again, her eyes going completely white. A few seconds later, the video feeds began to clear. Not completely, but at least enough to see shapes moving down hallways and through dimly lit rooms as the view on the monitor changed rapidly from camera to camera.
There was no sign of Darby, but Jake cursed when he saw Damien and at least twenty other men with him. Some had stopped to form a security perimeter at each entrance to the areas where the conference rooms were to keep people from wandering into the action, but most were heading straight for the room the Bilderberg Society was using. And weapons were already coming out.
“Shit,” Jake said. “Misty, whenever you’re done in there, we’re going to need your help.”
Hoping she not only heard him but would slip out of the computer in time to lend an assist, he headed for the door, flipping channels on his radio on the way.
“Jes. Caleb. Damien is here and he has an army of assholes with him. It’s going down now.”
Jake paused with his hand on the doorknob, wanting to say more. But there wasn’t time. Besides, the things he wanted to say were for Jes’s ears alone.
“Be careful,” he finally said, hoping Jes understood everything he couldn’t say.
Jerking open the door, he raced down the brightly lit hallway, through one arch then the next as he headed for the stairwell. The moment he flipped back to the main team’s radio frequency, it was to hear Harley’s soft voice saying she could smell the creatures—lots of them.
“I’m picking up at least ten distinct scents outside the room,” she added. “They’re surrounding us.”
That announcement was followed by Forrest’s low whisper letting them know there were three people in the basement.
“I think they’re going to cut the power to the hotel,” he said.
The words were barely out before the deed was done and the hallway Jake was in pitched into darkness. It was broad daylight outside, but without windows in the corridors, it could just as well have been midnight. He expected emergency lighting to come on immediately—maybe even an alarm of some kind—but neither happened. Darby’s people had disabled everything. If he didn’t hate the fucker so much, he would have been impressed.
Luckily, Jake didn’t need light to see where he was going. Werewolves could see just fine in the dark. His ears picked up the sounds of confused murmurs from all around the hotel, people wondering what had happened to the power, why the back-up generator wasn’t coming up, and why the hell they were paying two thousand dollars a night for a place that didn’t have one.
All at once, the shooting started and the general babble of confusion he could hear around him turned to shouts and screams of outright panic, accompanied by the thud and crash as people running for their lives, no doubt smashing into each other and everything in their path.
Jake made the last turn down the hall toward the conference rooms and found four men waiting for him. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved when his nose told him none of the men were like Darby. They were just normal everyday men—wearing night vision goggles and armed with H&K MP7 submachine guns.
It took them a few seconds to catch sight of Jake running at them in the dark hallway, but when they did, they didn’t hesitate to light him up. Four weapons with extended magazines firing at full auto put a lot of metal in the air, and he felt several of the armor-piercing high-velocity rounds slice right through him.
If Jake hadn’t been so close before they noticed him, it could have gone badly for him. Fortunately, he was able to get into their personal space before one of them put a bullet through his head. Or heart.
Jake didn’t realize until then that he’d yet to draw his Glock. It had been sitting heavy in its holster the entire time he’d been running. And now that he was within grappling distance of four men trying their best to kill him, it was too late to bother. But his claws and fangs had come out at some point during the run, which were just as good if not better.
When one of the men aimed the insanely short submachine gun at him, Jake instinctively grabbed it and shoved it aside as it rattled out a short burst of rounds. The trigger puller had intended to put the bullets through Jake’s chest, but instead ended up shooting one of his buddies in the face. Jake was glad it was dark and that his enhanced vision lacked the same color clarity at night as it did in the daylight. The vision of the man’s head coming apart and the resulting splatter against the back wall wasn’t something he needed to see.
One down…three to go.
