“Kat’s in the system,” Jackson said, looking at his phone. “The cameras on the service entrance are looped, and the gate camera goes dark in ninety seconds.”
I looked at the house through the windshield. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out much besides the vague shape of a house with a light in what I guessed was a second-floor window where Wolfe had told me to have her wait when I called her this afternoon with the plan. I kept trying to imagine what it felt like, knowing help was coming, sitting in a house that belonged to the man you were leaving while you counted down the hours for help to arrive.
It made me think of Julius, and how sure he’d been that help was coming, and how sure I’d been that it wasn’t. In a world where men like Anton Corvane existed, I was just glad I could be the hope for Imogen that I hadn’t had.
Suddenly, the gate swung open. Kat’s doing, I assumed, from wherever she was sitting with her laptop, running the feed and the security loop and probably three other things simultaneously.
We drove through and came to a stop a short distance from the house.
“Noah.” Jackson’s voice was quiet. I looked at him. “You stay in this SUV until I come for you. Doors locked. You don’t open them for anyone but me.”
“I know.”
“Say it back.”
I looked at him. “I stay in the vehicle. Doors locked. I don’t open them for anyone but you.”
He held my gaze for a moment before reaching for me and pulling me over for a quick kiss. Then he nodded once and reached for the door handle.
“Jackson,” I said.
He looked back.
“Be careful.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “Always,” he said.
He got out, and the door closed, and I was alone.
I reached for the earpiece Jackson had given me and slipped it in my ear so I could at least hear what was going on. I watched them move up the drive toward the service entrance. Three shapes in dark clothing, moving slowly, spaced evenly apart, with Hawk slightly ahead.
I exhaled.
The next part was supposed to be simple. Walk up to the service entrance, Hawk would engage the guard with a story—a delivery issue, a question about the property next door, something plausible enough to get close. Then it would be over beforethe guard understood what was happening. Quiet. Professional. Nobody hurt.
That was the plan.
I saw the guard at the service entrance step forward to meet Hawk, and then I saw the second man come around the corner of the house.
My stomach dropped.
He came from the far side, from the direction of the garage, and he was moving with purpose. Something had gone wrong. Maybe he’d seen something on a camera before Kat looped it, or heard something, or just had the bad timing of coming around at exactly the wrong moment. He was big, broader than the first guard, and his hand was already moving toward his hip.
Everything happened fast after that.
Hawk went first. He moved into the first guard, not away, the same way Jackson had taught me in the gym that day. The first guard went down hard and didn’t get up. Gator was already moving toward the second man, and there was this one terrible moment where the second guard had his weapon half-drawn, and Gator wasn’t close enough to stop him that I couldn’t breathe, but then, Jackson came from the left.
I hadn’t even seen him move into position. He was just there, between the guard and Gator, one hand on the guard’s gun hand and the other at his throat, and it was over in seconds. The manwent down the way the first one had, controlled and definitive, and Jackson stepped back and looked at Gator, and Gator gave him a nod.
Through the earpiece, I heard Hawk’s voice, steady as if he was reporting the weather. “Two down. Service entrance clear. Moving in. We need to check for any more surprises before we extract the target.”
“Copy that,” Jackson said.
I watched the three of them move to the service door. Gator tried the handle. Imogen must have unlocked it, because it opened without resistance, and they went inside. I knew I was safe in the car, but I didn’t like being out here all alone with no idea what was going on inside the house, and they weren’t talking aside from an occasional, “Clear”.
The waiting was the hardest part. It always was. I took a moment to breathe slowly and run through my inventory.
Where am I?
