While Kane and Brooke messed with the record player underneath the TV, and Walker spoke quietly to Sabrina, I stared at the amber liquid in my glass.
I’d thought Jolyn and her friends were corporate thieves. Now I understood they meant to take down Mahn—three people against a billion-dollar multinational corporation.Not very good odds.
When she’d said “empire” I thought she meant his pharmaceutical business, not a hidden agenda where people’s lives were on the line. And now Walker’s former crew were thrown into the mix. This spelled disaster to anyone caught in the cross fire. I should have gotten more information about Jolyn’s plans before I’d left, but I’d been more concerned about Walker than what three women were planning to do with their day.
I needed to find their headquarters and let them know Clyborne Inc. was in the picture now.
An older-sounding jazzy beat filled the room, and Brooke gave a satisfied whoop. “I’ve always wanted a record player. They’re so retro.” She pulled Kane against her, moving to the rhythm. The big guy only had eyes for his mate, his face glowing. “I think I promised you a dance, sir,” she said, her tone suggestive.
I rubbed a hand over my face, mystified at what my life had become over the past week. “Hey, guys. If you’re going to have that kind of dance, you need to head to your own room.”
11
JOLYN
My heart feltlike someone had stabbed it a million times. I’d covered myself with five blankets, and still shook. Kane was…I didn’t have a word for it. Monster? Abomination? Kane, the boy of my heart, my kindred spirit…
Unable to finish the thought, a sob left my mouth. My eyes were opened to the truth, but my chest felt like a chasm.
I couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t do much except hide in my room and try to remove those screams from my brain. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see the blood and carnage. I couldn’t sleep.
How many of these ferocious monsters existed around me? If Kane was one, who else?
My hands were icy cold. I didn’t know if I would ever be warm again. The only silver lining with this horror—Emerson was the nicest he’d ever been to me. Kept saying how we were in this together…
* * *
Another truck rumbled through the gate, a cloud of dust billowing behind as it turned on the highway. That was the second cargo vehicle to leave in the past thirty minutes. What I wouldn’t give to know what was on those trucks. Maybe we’d find something inside to tell us.
Alina and I crouched fifty feet from the chain-link fence topped with barbwire. It was after one o’clock in the morning, and this place didn’t seem like it was winding down anytime soon. With Marley doing support from our van, and only two of us out here, we needed to be as stealthy as possible.
We wore all-black tactical gear, knitted caps over our heads. Alina had insisted I darken my face and throat with makeup, because otherwise my pale skin “glowed in the dark”—it wasn’t an unfair statement. Night vision goggles gave us a superb view of the area, bathing everything in a green glow. Already I didn’t like what I saw: too much activity.
A cargo plane was parked on the tarmac. Guards patrolled the perimeter in pairs. All the windows in the warehouse were lit up like a holiday lantern. A third truck came out of the garage, and I flexed my fingers. How the hell were we supposed to get in there?
The night remained calm and cool, barely a breeze to ruffle the leaves. When it was this quiet, I felt like every one of our movements was as loud as a gunshot, signaling our position. But I had a right to be paranoid. We’d found two motion detectors in the trees along the fence line, and kept well back because of them.
One of the plane’s propellers began to spin, the back of it brightening with orange from its internal combustion. My stomach clenched. Where was it headed? To my brother? To the arena? Its whirring sound reached where we perched, the volume increasing when the next propeller joined it in motion. Still as statues, we watched for long minutes. The ground crew removed the wheel chocks, cleared the area, and the plane taxied to the end of the runway. It sat there a while before the engine roared louder, then the plane sped forward. The front tipped upward, and the wheels lifted from the ground. Lights blinked in the dark as it flew farther away.
An artificial hush settled around the warehouse in the absence of its noise pollution. I looked over at Alina. We didn’t speak—the motion detectors had made us extra cautious. She pressed her lips in a thin line. Just like me, she must have realized we might not be able to breach this place. There were only two of us, and we hadn’t come here for a suicide mission. If it was too dangerous, we’d need to back out.
Still, we waited, looking for an opportunity. Minutes, then hours passed, and we remained in our concealed positions. Then, one by one, the lights went out in the building.
My heart rate picked up tempo. We hadn’t seen a truck leave since the plane, but cars had thinned in the parking lot, each clearing the gatehouse one at a time. Now it looked like the guards on the perimeter duty were reduced by half.
I glanced at Alina, and she nodded. We could do this. We waited another thirty minutes before I spoke in my comm to Marley. “We’re a go,” I said.
“Roger that. One moment.”
Not even a minute had gone by when the floodlights surrounding the property went out, submerging the whole area in darkness. Earlier, Marley had started some rumors about rolling power outages in the area.
“Electricity has been disabled. You may proceed. Over”
Alina and I stood. Through the green haze of my night vision goggles, I watched one of the guards on this side of the property speak into his radio. The pair of them waited a moment, then turned on flashlights before resuming their route.
My legs protested from holding still for so long, but I pushed through the pain to jog down the hill. We skirted the motion detectors even though they should have been ineffective with the power cut.
We paused a moment, waiting for the guards to pass. Using the thermal imaging on my goggles, I made sure no one was on the other side of the back entrance. We continued forward after the guards rounded the building. Crouching by the chain-link fence, Alina pulled her bolt cutters out of her pack and got to work. Glock in hand, I scanned the area, seeking threats. Everything remained quiet.
