Beckett swore once, short and vicious, and pressed deeper into his alcove.
I leaned out and fired at the first hostile. He ducked back behind the cart. The second one used the opening to move forward, closing the distance.
That was the problem with a thirty-foot corridor. It didn’t stay thirty feet for long.
The second hostile fired again. The round chewed into the doorframe by Beckett’s shoulder, spraying splinters. Beckett couldn’t return fire without stepping into the first hostile’s line. They were boxing us, one holding Beckett in place while the other pushed up the hallway toward me.
The first hostile came out from behind the cart. He was fifteen feet from me, moving fast. I stepped out of the alcove to meet him because letting him get closer on his terms was worse than closing the distance on mine.
We both fired. His round went past my ear, close enough that I felt the air move. Mine hit him in the shoulder and spun him sideways. He didn’t go down. He swung the gun back toward me with his other hand, but by then, I was on top of him.
I grabbed the slide and drove the barrel at the ceiling. He squeezed off one more round into the plaster above us. I stripped the weapon and tossed it behind me. He swung at my head and connected with my jaw hard enough that I tasted copper. I took it, got behind his arm, and drove him face first into the wall. His forehead hit the plaster and his legs quit.
I looked over and found Beckett had made quick work of his bad guy also. I zip-tied the first hostile’s wrists behind his back. Beckett had the second man facedown on the carpet, knee in hisspine, pulling a zip tie tight. Blood on Beckett’s knuckles. A raw scrape up his forearm.
“Two tangos down on seventh floor,” I said into comms. “Situation contained.”
“Copy,” Hunter said. “Travis, the third?”
Silence on the line. Three seconds. Five.
“I lost him.” Travis’s voice had changed. Tighter, faster. “He was behind the other two on the fourth-floor feed, and then he wasn’t. Could’ve exited on five or six. Could still be coming up.”
Beckett stood and wiped his knuckles on his pants. “Could’veis going to get us all shot if we’re not careful.”
“I’m checking every feed I’ve got.”
Hunter made the call fast. “Logan, Beckett. Get to the suite. Move the client out through the service corridor to the freight elevator. Secondary route. Use it now. Local PD are going to be coming in soon, and then things will really go to shit.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’ll find our third. Go.”
Beckett and I moved. The two men on the floor weren’t going anywhere. We left them and went down the corridor toward the suite.
The hallway was quiet now. That was worse. The known threat was behind us, handled. The unknown threat was somewhere in the building, and every closed door we passed was a question I couldn’t answer.
I was on point. Beckett was behind me, covering our six. We moved the way you move when someone might be around any corner. Smooth, controlled, every doorway a potential problem.
Twenty feet from the suite.
Fifteen.
Somewhere on the floor, a door slammed.
It was just a door. A heavy hotel room door caught by its hydraulic arm and released, swinging shut with a thick, percussive thud. That was all it was.
The hallway split right before my eyes.
The carpet under my boots became packed dirt. The fluorescent light above me was sunlight cutting through a shattered wall. The door that slammed was still slamming, except it wasn’t a door anymore. It was the concussive punch that comes before the ringing, the one that hits your chest before your ears catch up.
I was moving. My body didn’t stop because ten years of training had built a machine that ran whether I was inside my own body or not. My feet kept going, my hands stayed where they were supposed to be.
But my eyes weren’t tracking the corridor ahead. They were tracking a doorway in a building I’d cleared six years ago in Kabul, and the light cutting through it was wrong. Too bright, too sharp, coming from an angle that didn’t exist in a hotel in Spokane.
Sounds bent. Travis’s voice in my earpiece stretched thin and then compressed, layering over radio chatter that hadn’t existed for years. Someone was talking. Someone was always talking. The ringing was there underneath everything, the way it always was underneath everything.
Three seconds. Five.
