Ripper drums his fingers on his thighs. Graham pushes to his feet and strides to the back of the plane. A few seconds later, he drops down next to Rip and hands him a cup of coffee. “Drink this.”
The change in him is almost immediate. His shoulders relax, and though his hands aren’t steady when he accepts the steaming cup, the first sip centers him. “I’ll be okay,” he says, as much to himself as to Graham. “Forgot what it was like. On mission.”
“You’re not breaching with us,” Ry says. “There’s new construction not far from Simon’s compound. Half a dozen houses still unfinished. You, Hope, and Wyatt are staying there while the rest of us take that asshole and his crew down.”
My first instinct is to protest. I want to see Arrens take his last breath. Hell, I want to be the one to end him. But I won’t leave Hope’s side.
“Rip stays in Seattle. Always. Hell, I haven’t even been on a mission in six months.”
Ryker’s words play on a loop in my head. Yet, he and Ripper are both here. Both ready to lose everything to save a woman they’ve only known for three days.
“There’s no cell service,” Hope says, the edge to her voice drawing me back to the present. “Simon and his men all have special phones. One time, he had a repairman come to work on the dishwasher. I stole the guy’s phone and tried to call for help, but it didn’t work.”
When she shudders and covers her face with her hands, I raise the armrest between us and pull her against me. “Deep breaths, darlin’. You’re safe. He can’t get to you here.”
She jerks away. “We’re on a plane, Wyatt. Of course he can’t get to me here.” After a blink, she curses under her breath. “There are at least six armed men around the compound all the time. Another six who travel with him. He’s never alone. Never unprotected.”
“Sounds a lot like Russia,” Ry says. His expression darkens, and a muscle in his jaw ticks until he cracks his neck. “Kolya—piece of shit heroin kingpin—took Wren. He had dozens of men, cameras, and drug runners who kept watch and reported on anything suspicious. He died. Painfully. So will Simon.”
The sun sets outside the half-finished house in Salt Lake City, but we can’t see it. Ryker tacked black plastic over every window, and battery-powered floodlights illuminate what will one day be a formal living room.
West unrolls a large piece of butcher paper and tapes it to the wall. Ten minutes later, he puts the finishing touches on a sketch of Simon’s compound. Everything Hope could tell us down to the approximate measurements of all the rooms.
“It’s likely Bettina is either in the basement or in the upstairs space, here.” West points to the small, windowless room Simon would lock Hope in when he wanted to punish her. “Infil is going to be a bitch if we can’t pinpoint her location.”
“Working on it,” Ripper says. On his laptop screen, the walls of the compound come into view. “Switching to thermals.” After a few taps to his keyboard, the feed flickers, and turns black and green. A handful of red shapes move slowly on either side of the compound, but the center is nothing but a black void.
“Rip?” Ry peers over the tech genius’s shoulder. “Is something wrong with the drone?”
A tremor racks Ripper’s hand until he makes a fist. “No. The entire place is a dead zone.” He directs the drone to fly in a wide 360 view of the house, garage, gardens, and outer walls, but nothing on screen changes. “Fuck!” He throws the joystick onto the makeshift table fashioned from plywood and sawhorses and pushes away. “Nothing but a fucking failure.”
He’s up the sweeping—but unfinished—staircase before anyone can stop him. Ry shoots West a hard stare. “Keep working. I’ll talk to him.”
Neither of the men make a sound on the stairs, and West carries on like nothing happened. Except for the strain in his voice. “Clearly, his signal jammers extend beyond the edge of the property. Blind infil is risky as fuck, but we’ve done it before. Huddle up. This is gonna get complicated.”
Hope
The minutes pass slowly, despite the buzz of activity around me. A small speaker attached to some sort of satellite receiver crackles with static. “Base to Alpha Team,” Wren says from back in Seattle.
“Whiskey here,” West says. “What is it, Base?”
I touch Wyatt’s arm. “Whiskey?”
“Code names,” he says quietly. “Romeo—that’s Ry—doesn’t use real names in the field. So West is Whiskey. Inara’s Indigo. Graham is Golf.”
“Hotel got another email. Sending it to you now.”
My stomach flips. Simon’s getting impatient. I don’t want to see it. I can’t watch Bettina suffer again. “Wyatt…” My voice cracks, and he wraps his arms around me.
“I’m right here, darlin’. I’ve got you.”
Ripper angles his laptop while the rest of the team forms a protective semicircle around us. Do they know how alone I feel? How terrified I am?
Hope, it has been eight hours and you continue to try my patience. Return to me with what you stole, and perhaps I will be lenient with your punishment.
Three photos accompany the email. My legs give out at the sight of my friend—the only woman who dared speak to me for three years—sitting against a concrete wall. Bettina’s arms are bound behind her, and she stares up at the camera. One eye is completely swollen, but the other is so wide, her terror bleeds through the screen. The front of her uniform dress is torn, exposing her bra. Angry red welts cover her chest, and her neck is so bruised, it’s nearly purple.
I clutch Wyatt’s black, long-sleeved shirt to stop my fingers from shaking so badly. “That’s one of the basement walls,” I manage over my own fear. “Only Simon, Brix, and Rex are allowed down there.”
