“Levi got into the reverend’s safe, found the burner, the rest is gravy.”
“And the other name?”SaintMichael.
“Still running intel.”
“You think he’s also inside?”
Caleb shook his head. “Nothing on screens, so, if you could try not to kill everyone so we could get useful information, that would be good.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. I’d kill or be killed, but for Caleb, I’d try to hold back if I could. “Do you have pictures of the ones I’m not supposed to kill?”
“Three look like hired muscle, but the other two don’t fit, and I’ve matched them to the users in the forum.” Caleb flashed uptwo men. One in a ball cap, sixties, cheap tracksuit, heavyset, smoking. The other, maybe in his forties, slicked-back hair; skinny as fuck. The surveillance pictures were clear enough for me to remember their faces.
“Ball-Cap and Skinny. Okay.”
“There are three kids inside, and we have intel on a sale.”
“If there’s a sale, why don’t we wait for it, so all the traffickers are under one roof?”
He shot me a glance I had no hope of understanding. I’d probably crossed some kind of line, but I was a big picture kind of murderer-slash-cleaner.
“The kids in there don’t look good,” was all Caleb said.
I nodded.
Caleb sighed and stared back at his screen, and I moved a little closer. He was dressed up, a suit of all things, in the middle of the fucking night. I thought he was supposed to be in the office. I needed to get a tracker on him. Had he been on a date? Had he been fucked? Or was he the one fucking? That thought made me hard. I rearranged my cock.
“Are you really getting a hard-on for fucking up shit?” he muttered.
“No, you smell good,” I said.
He closed his eyes briefly. That line usually worked. People liked hearing they were wanted, but Caleb didn’t react the way most people should have. He didn’t soften or lean in; he ignored me, which made me want to test him more.
“What the fuck ever, Arnie,” he snapped.
“Why do you call me Arnie?”
“Terminator,” he snapped, and I realized what he meant. Was that an insult? It gave me a warm feeling that he’d placed a nickname on me. I’d think about that later.
“Were you on a date?” I asked and poked at his suit. He edged away.
“None of your business!”
“Is it always men you date? And do you fuck or get fucked?” I asked.
He stared right at me. I could read all kinds of emotions from visual cues, but his expression was blank. “Jesus Christ, Novak. Concentrate.”
I shrugged and refocused on eliminating the bad guys.
“Five adults downstairs. Central living area. Victims are in a shielded room on the west side. Reinforced. Probably sound dampened.” He flicked to another overlay. “There are two main entry points. Levi and Killian will take the back; you go in the front and ensure no one stops the retrieval.”
No one will get in the way with a bullet in their head.
Caleb expanded the west wing of the building, isolating a section where the thermal read fractured.
“Children aren’t visible,” he continued. “Hence, the shielded room hypothesis. Reinforced walls, possible signal dampening. That’s where they’re likely being kept.”
I leaned closer, bracing one hand against the interior wall of the van above his shoulder. The distance between us closed without me deciding to move. Six feet became three. Most of the time, I’d correct myself and reset back to six.
