Keys pushed his chair over to another keyboard and pulled up the feeds for the entire town. He was still running his system check when the first gunshot rang out.
* * *
The front entrancewas hit hard. An armored truck with a battering ram attempted to take down the wall. While the building held, it created a hole big enough for six men to slip through. Another half dozen came into view coming from the east, presumably having egressed through the compromised door.
They all wore black fatigues with balaclavas and assault rifles. But from the way they moved, they were not a team that ran like a well-oiled machine.
Not like the VDMC who met them head-on. Thorne must have taken them up through the underground tunnels, inspired by the secret cellar beneath the clubhouse.
Minutes later Grimm and Goose joined them in the corridor, moving with efficiency. Though there was still no sign of Bear, Ghost, or Lucky, Bulldog leapt through the opening in the front corridor, followed closely behind by Angel and Cage. The club would not all be able to come, but those with kids knew the procedure. The prospects and specific members would guard the women and children.
Chaos was the only word to describe what happened next. As Keys fought to gain control of his system, gunfire rang out like ametallic hailstorm. It was loud and ugly, challenged only by the screams of the wounded.
Fighting his own battle, Keys watched and tried to warn who he could when he could. His system was treating him like an infection, his own code the white blood cells hunting him down. The kernel was tampered with, acting like he was the intruder instead of the other way around. How? Who could have gotten such easy access? It shouldn’t be possible… Shouldn’t it? His fingers jumped between three keyboards, pulling back access, locking down sections, trying to rebuild faster than the blind spots could appear. If he could just get ahead of it…
Outside, Jigsaw, Starbucks, and Scar engaged a massive group, more men than Keys could accurately count. Angel must have split off from the others because she was now in the rafters with her rifle. Scar moved through the mercenaries with an efficiency that had always made Keys simultaneously grateful and unsettled to witness. Jigsaw was holding the line at the lot’s edge, but another two vehicles rolled up and even more men piled out.
What the fuck was going on? How many were there now? Two dozen? Three? There were too many, and the VDMC was split, and Keys needed more time.
He needed thirty seconds. The packet loss was minimal but it was there, and he was going to use it to turn the tides on this fucker who thought he could best Keys.
“Bulldog! Angel!” he shouted into comms, praying that the man had his earpiece in. If his club brothers forgot their pieces, Keys was going to hot glue them into their ears when they got through this. “Let them in!”
On the monitor, he saw Bulldog pause. “What? Are you mad?”
“Trust me! Let them in.” They wanted inside his building so badly. Keys had every intention of showing them just how poor a decision that was. “Fall back. Get down into the tunnels.” Another glance at his monitors. “Thorne! Secure the east side. Hold there and drive them down Corridor Delta.”
“Delta, copy. We going with Operation Mousetrap?”
Keys continued coding. “Fuck yeah, we are.”
A moment later, Goose let out a loud whistle. “Over here, fuckers! Follow me!”
Keys heard the stomping of boots, but did not look away from what he was doing to watch Goose’s chase. He kept at what he was doing, needing only seconds more to set his own trap.
“Grimm, let’s move! Grimm!”
There was something off in Thorne’s voice that caught Keys’ attention. Maybe because he’d heard a similar tone from his club brothers for years, the tenor of an older brother who registered something was wrong. Whatever it was, it made him stop long enough to pull up the corridor feed and look for the brothers.
Grimm had his weapon up. The man in front of him had his hands raised, bleeding from a shoulder wound Grimm or someone else had put there, down on his knees. Clearly, the man had surrendered, and yet Grimm wasn’t moving.
For a moment, Keys thought his monitor had frozen, everything seemed so still—and then the mercenary’s hand moved to his ankle holster.
“Grimm!” Keys shouted into comms.
The shot was no louder than the others, and yet it seemed to permeate through Keys’ headphones like an explosion.
Grimm didn’t even move. He didn’t flinch or go for the gun. He held his position, completely immobile. Stone. His only saving grace was the man’s hastily, sloppy shot. It went wide, completely missing Grimm.
But Goose came around the corner behind Grimm, just as the man pulled the trigger—and Goose went down.
CHAPTER 18
Keys had watched a lot of things on his monitors that he wished he hadn’t. He’d seen the bar come down, watched Grumpy be carried out with a shard of glass protruding from his eye, monitored Ranger’s tracker as it remained motionless for four days… He’d learned years ago to filter what was on his screens to keep moving, keep working the problem, because stopping was the one thing the people who relied on him couldn’t afford.
But the moment that shot rang out over his headset, Keys froze. Visions of those he lost over the years crossed over his mind’s eye. Was he about to lose Goose, too? His club brothers were his family, but Goose, Grimm, and Thorne? They were his employees, yes, but they were also his responsibility. He’d brought them here, he’d put them in danger.
Goose was down, thrown back onto the raised access flooring. One second he had been laughing, leading the mercenaries on, ironically, a wild goose chase, and the next he was on the corridor floor with his eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.
