“Fair enough,” I said as I checked the magazine of the scoped rifle.
“You want a shotgun, too?”
I holstered the pistol on my hip. “Shotgun, throwing stars, and earwigs. I want us to be able to communicate, even if we get split up.”
I watched him turn one on and slip it into his ear. “Good thinking. Here.”
And when I slipped mine into my ear, I heard an alarming cadence.
Two bullets, in tandem, bouncing off the same window.
“Shit,” I hissed as I marched toward the sound.
Brutus grabbed my arm. “Doesn’t mean we have to split up now. How long before these windows are compromised?”
I just shook my head and turned back to face him. “I don’t know, but we’ve got more than one sniper out there. We need to be careful, whatever we do.”
He nodded before he reached back into the closet and instead of pulling out a shotgun for himself as well, he pulled out a scoped rifle.
“Good thing I’ve been practicing with Tank,” he muttered as he strapped it to his back.
Another doubled set of bullets bouncing off a window somewhere caught my ear.
20
DOC
“Why the fuck did none of Range’s damn shit go off?”
Brutus’s question only made the answer sour in my mouth. “Because they’re outside of the perimeter, shooting over the gate.”
He grabbed my arm and yanked me further down the hallway. “Fuckin’ hell, that means they’re casing us.”
“We need darkness,” I said as I yanked out of his grasp and fell in step beside him.
It felt weird, not hearing the girls panicking.
“That means we need night vision goggles,” Brutus said.
I took a hard left. “Good thinking.”
Thuh-thunk.
Thuh-thunk.
Thuh-thunk.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins as we wrapped our way back around to the armory we just left. It was much closer to the panic room than I wanted it to be, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I hadn’t had a chance to completely rearrange this place the way I wanted it.
But moving through the house and listening to how the bullets changed gave away a fuckton.
“Brutus,” I said as we approached the armory.
He reached for the doorknob and shouldered in. “What?”
“The bullets are following us.”
I’d never seen Brutus freeze that way before he turned to face me. “I did keep hearing them while we were moving.”
