“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. How come it took you so long to come get me?”
On the video screen, Ripper raises his head, anguish written all over his face. “I was deep in the traffic camera logs, trying to trace the hack that shut them down. The alert was on my second monitor. I fucked up, Ronan. If we’re too late…it’s because of me.”
“No,” Dax snaps. “You willnottake the blame for this. You were doin’ what I asked, and the second you saw the alert, you were on it.”
The two of them might be closer than brothers, but Ripper doesn’t give a fuck what Dax is saying.
I step right in front of the webcam so there’s no way Rip won’t see my eyes. “Dax is right. How were you supposed to know these assholes would let her within a thousand feet of a computer?”
“We losttwenty minutes,” Rip says. “There’s nothing on that file share.”
The man is close to shutting down. To falling into his own memories from six years of brainwashing at the hands of a depraved Afghan megalomaniac who used to throw him into an old well and let dozens of scorpions sting him until he was crazed from the pain.
“Zephyr knows accessin’ that share logs her location. She’ll hold on as long as she can. But we need to stop kickin’ ourselves and figure out exactly where she is.” With every word, I try to believe. But from what she told me about François, he’s not one to forgive, or give her a second chance once she fails to give him what he wants.
West clicks a remote control and a mirror of his tablet pops up next to Ripper on screen. “This is a map of the area within a five-mile radius of the cell tower the ping came from. It’s nothing but industrial parks and open fields. This complex,” he circles a grouping of six buildings, “is our best bet. But every single structure is empty. They could be in any of them. Rip is pulling blueprints now, and we’ll need a separate infil plan for each of them.”
“Fuck. How long is that goin’ to take?”
“As long as it needs to,” the SEAL snaps. Almost immediately, he shakes his head. “Sorry. I know what’s at stake here, Ronan. But near as we can tell, there are at least five members of the cartel in Boston. Including the leader, François Strauss. Dax and Austin have been working the phones all night, and every one of them has multiple suspected kills. If we rush this without a plan, we could all end up dead.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, but that doesn’t help when the only images running through my head are from my nightmare. “What can I do?” Infil isn’t my bag. Surveillance, weapons, hell, even hand-to-hand combat. But I’m not a strategy guy like West is.
“Take Raelynn to your equipment room and help her load everything we’ll need. There’s a bird due on the roof in twenty minutes to fly us to a field eight miles from the complex. Any closer, and they’ll hear us coming. There will be a van waiting for us when we land. We go in fast and get out quick, and take as many of those fuckers out as we can, but our top priority is Zephyr.”
Raelynn stands and stretches, her back popping loudly. “Well, come on, Ronan. Show me where y’all keep the cool toys.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Zephyr
“Load the box onto the truck,”François says. “We’ll dump it in the reservoir. She can drown. Screaming. And pack up all our equipment. I want to be out of here in twenty minutes.”
Hunched over inside the cold, dark space, blood streaming from dozens of cuts, fresh electrical burns on my stomach, and so weak, they didn’t even bother to bind my wrists this time, I rest my forehead on my knees.
Twenty minutes. That’s all I have left.
I wish I could have seen Ronan one more time. Told him I love him. That I was stupid for not giving him all the evidence I had.
Something bangs into the box—hard—and I yelp. A strange sound—a rhythmic light thumping—accompanies my entire world shaking. Then I’m moving. Some sort of forklift?
It feels like forever before we stop again, and whoever’s in charge of this thing obviously needs lessons, because the box shakes as it slams into something metallic, and a crack of light appears to my left.
Rising again, those same thumps, and then I hear Robbie’s laugh a second before the box tips over.
My knees hit, along with my head. And the crack gets bigger. I can see through it now. Corrugated metal. A truck bed. Beyond that, lights spaced at regular intervals. Some sort of warehouse?
I count to a hundred, hoping that’s enough time for Robbie to head back to wherever the rest of the crew is before I throw my entire body against the left wall.
Wood splinters. Not enough. So I try again. The impact is excruciating, and so loud, I’m certain someone’s going to hear me. But I can stick my fingers through the opening.
They’re so stiff, I struggle to bend them around the splintered wood. It’s my only chance, and I willnotlet the pain stop me. The stimulants are wearing off, and I’m so tired, but I have to believe Ronan knows where I am. That he’s on his way. That if I can get out of here and hide from François and his band of assholes, Ronan will find me.
“Comeon,” I grunt and try to twist my body in the cramped space. I need more leverage. It’s impossible to get my feet against the left side, but I twist the other way, ignoring the dozens of fresh splinters until my back is pressed to the broken board and my feet to the opposite side.
This is going to be bad.
With all I have in me, I push with my legs. The gashes on my back tear open again, but a loud crack spurs me on, and after a few seconds’ rest, I try again.
