“Do you think I don’t know that?” Kala got in his face. “Do you think I’m not going over every single time I ever joked about it? Every time I accused her of fading like a fairy princess? She’s in there and I know what she’s going through, so trust me, I understand that she was talking about us. I love my sister, and I’m going to be better to her.”
“I love your sister, and I’m going to be better to her, too.” Ben wasn’t going to back down. Kala was the hard case, and he had to make her believe him.
She stared for a moment before handing him a rifle. “I’ll kill you myself if you hurt her again.”
“I love it when my family hugs it out,” Big Tag said and he stood. The van was way too small with two large men and two tall women in it. “Ben, you memorize the place? Tris will be working from the comms van, but I want you to have good knowledge of what we’re walking into.”
“We’re going in via the delivery door, which is on the west side of the building. Tristan will take out the security cameras, but it won’t take Manny long to figure it out. We go in and then split up. We believe Kenzie is going to be held in the lower levels.” Kenzie had done a lot of research, including discovering that the castle had undergone extensive renovations. She’d managed to track down the company who’d done it and gotten the schematics. It was very industrial. They believed this was where Manny would do his medical research and make his bombs. “Lou should be down there, too, but we’re not sure which wing is for technical research and which is for medical, so we’ll have to take a chance. Manny’s residence seems to be on the top floor, and like Nepal, it’s got some serious security around it. He’ll try to get there. There’s a helo on top of the building, but the only way to access it is through Manny’s apartment or climbing up, which is how Lucy will ensure the fucker can’t fly.”
Tag reached for a handheld radio. “Lucy, how’s the climb?”
The radio crackled. “Easy peasy. Lou’s C-4 is in place, so blowthis sucker when you will. Although we might want to think about how it’s going to affect the environment…”
Tag shut the radio off. “She’s excellent at her job, but her mother has infected her with a deep desire to save the planet. We’re working on it. Everyone should be ready for that fucker to have the place wired with explosives. I don’t think he’ll blow them before he knows he has a path to the helo, but he could do it early. Be careful. Our prime mission is our people. And it’s go time. Charlie, baby, are you ready? You’re with me. Kala, don’t kill him.”
Well, this was going to be fun.
Ben entered third, Kala at his back and Big Tag at his front. His heart pounded, but he took a long breath as they moved across the loading dock. He had a comm in one ear and could hear Tristan’s and Tasha’s calm instructions.
“Lucy is almost on the ground. Sami’s meeting her, and they will be causing some chaos in the east wing. The shift change is on, and I expect a good portion of them will head that way. You have roughly three minutes before the new guard takes his first round if he doesn’t run off to see what’s going on. I don’t think these guys are particularly well trained, but there are a lot of them. Wait. I have movement. Stay put,” Tasha said.
Big Tag stopped at the end of the last dock, a wall separating them from the five or six guards who were huddled around what looked like the office portion of the loading dock. There was a computer system and a desk where the men were signing in or out, depending on their schedules.
It was good to know Manny kept all the proper records for his evil empire.
It was taking too long. He needed to get to Kenzie.
This was why the military guys were way better at this. They’d been trained to wait and not go strictly on their guts. His was telling him that Kenzie was in trouble, that she needed him, and all he wanted to do was run screaming for her.
What had she already been through? What had Manny done to her? It didn’t matter because he would do everything he could to help her heal. He just wanted her alive. He would deal with everything else.
He was going to trust. It was a start. He was going to trust one person, and that person was Ian Taggart. He was going to trust Ian and not allow himself to panic, not allow himself to give in to the need to meet Manny so they could finish this.
He didn’t want to finish because he now knew what he would be finishing was his life, and that wasn’t acceptable anymore.
He’d spent years working toward a point—defeating Manny—and not seeing anything beyond that moment.
He wanted a future now. A future with her.
Kenzie needed him. He saw her in a way no one else did. They were meant to be, and he wasn’t going to fight it one more second. He was going with it, and if his heart got broken then at least he’d fucking used it, given it to a woman who was more than worthy.
“Oh, we have a friend. Looks like Zach made his flight,” Tasha said. “He’s coming in with Cooper and TJ. Unit two, you have a go.”
“Zach, welcome home,” Big Tag said.
“Happy to be here, sir. You should know Henry Flanders is taking care of everyone we have in Bliss, and he’s monitoring the situation,” Zach said over the line.
From what he’d learned Henry Flanders was Big Tag’s mentor and Lucy’s father. “How did Zach get here so fast?”
Taggart kept his voice down, his eyes on the door about forty feet away. “He asked me to call him when I thought it was going down. I called the minute Lou was taken. He’s been making his way here for two days. I wouldn’t leave him behind, and he won’t leave Lou.”
The ground beneath them shook slightly.
“That’ll be Lucifer,” Kala said quietly. “She was going to blow two of the vehicles. I tried to get her to take down that weird wall thing, but I got a lecture on pre-Christian European architecture and why we shouldn’t explode it. See, that’s her real evil superpower. The power to bore me.”
He heard a whooshing sound as the door came open and then booted feet on the concrete floors.
“All right. You lost four of seven,” Tasha informed them. “And they left the laptop on. So if someone would like to murder a couple of assholes and take a look, that would be great. We need key cards. Tris is having some trouble with the interior security system, and that’s where we’re sure they’re keeping Lou and Kenz.”
