"No." Her voice was quiet but certain. "The man who took her failed." He stared at her. "My father failed her. He failed all of us.” The words hit him harder than they should have. Maybe it was because she understood something most people never would—that victims always blamed themselves first.
The church came into view twenty minutes later. It sat alone on a hill overlooking an abandoned rail yard, its weathered stone walls barely visible through the rain. The bell tower leaned dangerously to one side. Several stained-glass windows had long since shattered. It looked forgotten.
Rocco studied it through binoculars. "I've got two heat signatures outside."
"Only two?" Avery asked.
"That's the problem." Everyone knew why—because there should have been more. Keller hadn't built an empire by leaving two men to guard something so important.
"They only want us to see those two," Dante muttered.
Rocco lowered the binoculars. "I was thinking the same thing."
"They're bait,” Avery said as she killed the engine a block away. "So what's the play?"
Rocco spread an old blueprint of the church across his lap. "There are three entrances—the front doors, the crypt, and—” He tapped a faded section of the map. "A maintenance tunnel beneath the cemetery." Dante immediately looked toward the graveyard at the rows of crooked headstones that disappearedinto the darkness. He hated cemeteries because there were too many places to hide.
"I'll take the tunnel,” Dante said.
Rocco shook his head. "No."
"I know underground fighting,” Dante assured.
"So do I,” Rocco said.
Dante looked at him. "I've spent years clearing cartel tunnels."
"And I've spent years clearing terrorist compounds,” Rocco countered. For a second, they simply stared at one another before Avery sighed.
"Can the two alpha males stop measuring their dicks?” she asked.
Lark cleared her throat, and both men looked at her. She folded her arms over her chest. "You're doing it again."
Dante frowned. "Doing what?"
"Making plans without me,” she said. Neither man answered as she walked over to the blueprint. "My father sent me here,” she reminded as she tapped the church on the blueprint. "If this is about my mother—” She looked at Dante. "And your sister." She looked at Rocco. "And Keller." Her green eyes hardened with determination. "Then we stop acting like this is three different missions."
Rocco raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
"It's one mission." She looked between them. "We all go in—no splitting up, and no one playing the hero. If one person finds something, everyone knows about it. Dante hated how much sense it made, and Rocco looked equally unconvinced. "We move as one," Lark finished. "Or not at all."
Avery grinned. "I vote for the scary smart woman."
One by one, the operators nodded, and Rocco looked at Dante. "What do you think?"
Dante looked at Lark. The frightened woman he'd first guarded three years ago would never have spoken like that. She would have waited for permission or asked what she should do. This woman just took command of a room full of trained operators without even realizing it.
A slow smile spread across his face. "I think—” He looked directly at her. "That you're becoming exactly who your father was afraid you'd become."
Lark frowned. "What's that?"
He slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Free." The word hung in the rain between them, and no one spoke because no one needed to.
Avery checked her watch. "We've got movement." The two guards outside the church had disappeared.
Rocco immediately raised his rifle. "They know we're here."
Dante's instincts screamed. "No." He stared at the open front doors of the church. "They're inviting us in." Lightning split the sky, and for one brief second, the interior of the abandoned church lit up through the broken stained glass. Dante caught the unmistakable outline of someone standing at the altar, watching and waiting for them to make a move. The figure simply stood there until darkness swallowed the church once more. Then a single church bell rang, and Dante looked at Rocco.
