Next to him, Six moved from a lying to a crouched position, and Mac did the same.
“On it,” said Cabe.
Under the cover of darkness, Mac ran forward first. Never once did he doubt that Six had his back, even though the guy was still pissed at him for Louisa’s involvement. Professionalism and years of friendship meant that nothing could ever come between the three men.
He pressed up hard against the fencing, pulled wire cutters from his vest, and snipped the wires down the post until he could create a hole big enough for the two of them to pass through. Once he was inside the perimeter, Six raced forward and joined him, passing through the hole with ease. Using a couple of cable ties, Mac pulled the fence back down into position and secured it at the bottom. In the dark, it would be difficult to tell that the fence had been interfered with, which was important, given the regular patrols.
Together, they hurried across the open yard until they could press up against the side of the building. Across the lot, Mac could see Cabe and Gaz make their way to a set of doors at the rear of the building. Several years ago, a developer had bought the site and had applied for permits to build the current buildings. Attached to the request were several drawings, which the team had studied in detail. The plan was for Cabe and Gaz to disable power to the building, including the alarm. In the meantime, Six and Mac were to head through the manufacturing area up to the offices on the mezzanine floor to retrieve documents. Once Cabe and Gaz were done with the power, they would go out into the production facility and, guided by Louisa, create video footage of what was inside. If there were any obvious places where they could cause some damage to keep the facility out of production for some time, Louisa would let them know.
At Delaney’s request, they were not to cause any harm to people or property, at least not until they were certain that this was indeed the facility they were looking for. Mac hoped he could live up to the request, but even as the team had acknowledged it, they all knew deep down that it would be impossible if their mission went to shit.
Silently, Mac kept watch as Six picked the lock of the side door. They wouldn’t open it until they got the all-clear that there was no alarm.
“What’s taking you guys so long?” Mac whispered.
“Everything is shut down tight,” Cabe replied. “Just taking a while to pick all the locks.”
Matt looked down at his watch. “We have nineteen seconds until the guards are back.”
“Flash, I love you, but we only have nineteen seconds to save the Earth.” Gaz laughed. “Done.”
“Fuck you,” Mac replied. “And it was fourteen hours, asshole.” He knew because he’d watched Flash Gordon a million times as a kid.
He grinned at the quiet chuckle from Gaz. “And Dale Arden was a lot hotter than you!”
They entered the building with their guns drawn, and immediately all of Mac’s fears about being able to shoot disappeared into ether. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. He could feel its icy tingle working its way down his spine and along his arms. He loved the chill of it, the calm of it, the way it chased away anything else cluttering his brain. This is what he had trained for, this was what he was good at, and he inherently knew that he was going to do the right thing.
He and Six stayed close to the unlit walls, making their way past equipment until they reached the stairs to the mezzanine. Despite the stairs being made of expanded metal, they crept their way to the upper floor without a sound. The offices were locked, but it was easy for Six to slide a thin piece of plastic between the doorframe and the door. The click of the door unlocking seemed to reverberate around the building, causing both of them to freeze momentarily.
Once inside the office, they split up to search the room. “Okay, Delaney,” he whispered. “Guide us if you see anything.”
“I will. Be careful.” Her voice wavered slightly at the end.
Inappropriate humor had saved them from the horrors of these situations a million times over. If Delaney was going to understand more about what he did, and who he was under those situations, she could start now. “Given the quality of Six’s aim, I need to.”
Six, a man with around a hundred recorded kills as a sniper, chuckled. “Fuck you.”
Systematically, they began to open filing cabinets, looking through one hanging file folder at a time. “Who knew criminals took the time to alphabetize their files, and group shit together like this?”
“Fact. Psychopaths are one of the most methodical groups of people on the planet,” Delaney said.
“Did you know Louisa tells me weird shit all the time too?” Six chuckled quietly.
“I heard that, Rapp,” Louisa said, using Six’s last name.
“There!” Delaney’s voice made Mac jump. “Right there, the shipment folder. Take it out and flick through it. You know, this would have been quicker if you just let me come with you.”
Mac pulled the folder out as instructed. Inside were hand-scribbled notes and manifests.
“That’s the address of the airport in Arizona, the one where the delivery I was supposed to meet originated. It’s too much of a coincidence. We should take the folder.”
A loud clang sounded outside the room, and Mac hurried to the window, opening the white blinds a fraction so he could look out over the production area. “Everybody quiet until I say.” On the other side of the building, a security guard, gun drawn, came running into the manufacturing area. A slash of light caught the guard’s face, a reflection from the outside, as he looked around the room. “You hidden, Cabe?”
The sound of two taps came through Mac’s earpiece, something they did when they couldn’t talk. Two taps for yes, one for no. Mac scoured the darkness, one eye on the guard. It had fallen so silent that even through the glass of the window, he could hear the guard’s footsteps on the concrete floor.
Six brushed by him, a pile of papers under his arms, and Mac assumed he was finishing off the cabinet Mac had started.
Two more guards entered the manufacturing area. “Do you see anything?” one of them shouted to the first guard, who was still walking around every piece of equipment, gun shakily pointed in front of him. He turned and silenced them with a shush. Smart move. He shook his head, but gestured in Mac and Six’s direction, toward the stairs and offices.
Quickly Mac gestured to Six. If those guys started to walk up the stairs, they’d need a distraction in order to get out. Six collected everything they had found and stuffed it into his backpack. One option was to get Lite and Bailey, who were currently parked outside in separate vehicles, to create some kind of diversion. The other was to ask the same of Cabe and Gaz, depending on how close they were to the guards.
“There’s nobody in here,” one of them shouted. “Probably rats or some shit. Let’s go.”
The guard closest to them grabbed a handrail and placed one foot on the stairs, but then looked up to the office and paused. Finally, he stepped off and walked out of the manufacturing area. Mac let out a breath and then another when he saw Cabe and Gaz crawl from beneath the machine near where the two other guards had been standing.
It took them another twenty minutes to get the rest of what they needed and for Louisa to walk them through how to disable as much equipment as they could on their way out. Once they were back in the car and close to San Diego, the pressure valve came off.
“I think we might need to send Gaz back to lock-picking school,” Six teased. “Longest break-and-enter ever.”
Gaz laughed. “Maybe it’s because you were just finished too soon as usual. I don’t know how Louisa puts up with you.”
“Oh my God. You guys are awful,” Delaney said, and Mac couldn’t help but laugh.
“It’s always like this once a mission is over.”
A loud bang filled the truck, accompanied by a scream from Delaney. Mac’s heart went into overdrive. “Delaney, what the hell was that?” he shouted.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Delaney rushed to the monitors, where she cou
ld have a full visual on what was going on outside. “There are men outside, Mac. They’re blowing the lights out.” She looked at different views of the same scene, her heart pounding so violently that she felt spacey. “Oh my God, they have Ghost. He’d gone for pizza.” Two men were beating him, but Ghost was putting up a good fight. Upturned pizza boxes lay on the floor by his feet.
“Bailey,” she heard Mac shout. “Put your foot down. Buddha, Sherlock. Update?”
She looked over at the table where the two of them had been sitting as backup with aerial coverage and saw their headphones sitting on the table. They’d all thought it was over, that the mission had been completed. “Their headphones are in the conference room with me. Because you were out and on your way home, they went to the gym area to work out,” Delaney said, her voice sounding as panicked as she felt.
“I’m starting the timer,” she heard Mac say. “We’re about nine minutes out, Delaney,” he said. “All I need you to do is stay calm. Find cover. Can you and Louisa get to the showers?” he asked. “There are several lockable doors, plus there’s a manual handle you can use just inside the second door that can lift the shutters to access the frosted glass window. We did that for emergencies in the event the shutters failed and someone was trapped in that end of the building in a fire.”
Delaney looked at the monitors again. They’d been so busy making plans to attack that Delaney hadn’t considered what it would take to defend.
“I’m there, already,” Louisa said through the earpiece. “But Delaney is still in the office.”
“Ryder, Lite, what’s your ETA?” Mac shouted. Through her earpiece, she heard Ryder explain that they were a good ten minutes out because they’d left their vehicle and gone in on foot to spy on the incoming truck so as not to draw attention to themselves.
“Okay, Delaney. Stay in the conference room and lock the door,” Mac instructed.
She looked at the screen again. The roller shutter door was open just enough for several men to attempt to crawl underneath, all of them armed, and fire shots toward where Sherlock and Buddha were. She couldn’t just sit there twiddling her thumbs while two unarmed man faced off against a group of people who had come for her. Especially when she saw Buddha racing to close the double doors separating the warehouse from the offices, effectively giving them one more barrier to get through before they could get to her. He was unarmed, and, hell, he wasn’t even wearing a shirt, but his first thought was to keep her safe.
Grabbing the headsets off the table, she opened the door to the conference room and ran to the secured doors, which required a key code to be entered before they could be opened. She pulled on the handle. They were both solidly locked, so she pressed the buttons in sequence.
Two of the men squeezing through the opening were making good progress. Sherlock, in workout shorts and sneakers, was slamming a chair down on one. The other fired his gun straight at Sherlock, and Delaney screamed. Fortunately, the bullet appeared to have only grazed his calf.
Despite her fear, she checked that the coast was clear and opened the door. “Here,” she said, throwing Buddha a headset to where he was concealed. He couldn’t quite make it through the doors safely without being shot at.
“Stay inside, Delaney,” Sherlock yelled over his shoulder.
A bullet whizzed past the side of her face. It was so close she could feel the rush of air. Quickly, she jumped back into the hallway and slammed the door shut. Watching through the tiny sliver of a window, she saw Buddha attempt to make his way to the locker rooms. Maybe he was going there to help Louisa, but Delaney hoped it was because that was where his weapon was. He was making slow progress, though, because another assailant had spotted him and was firing at him occasionally while providing cover for the other men who were with him.
“We’re three minutes out. Delaney, tell me what’s happening,” Mac said.
“The gun safe—give me the number of the gun safe.” Delaney ran to where she knew the weapons were kept.
“Delaney, leave it to Sherlock and Buddha,” he said in a voice that was so calm, he could have been offering her a cup of coffee. “They’ve got it covered.”
“They don’t have it covered,” she replied, aware of the rising hysteria in her own voice. “Two men are trying to crawl under the roller shutter doors, firing at Sherlock, who isn’t armed because he was in the middle of a workout. And Buddha is trapped in gunfire behind the workout equipment. Now give me the safe number.”
“Okay, Buttons, here you go.” Mac recited the combination. Her finger shook as she attempted to hit numbers she immediately recognized as Brock’s birthday. “Are you in?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, I just want to get something loaded that I can get to Sherlock. I didn’t see Ryder, and last I saw, Ghost was being beaten up outside. So talk me through this.”
She followed his instructions and grabbed a gun significantly larger than the ones she’d been using at the shooting range. Mac told her which ammo went with it, and to make sure it was fully loaded.
As she ran back toward the door, she heard Six tell Louisa how much he loved her. Delaney’s throat tightened as it occurred to her that he might be doing it in case he never saw her again.
She keyed the number into the door. “I love you, Mac,” she whispered before she pulled it open.
“Shit, I love you, too, Buttons.” It was the first time he’d sounded anything but calm. His voice was thick with emotion.
The first guy trying to get in through the door managed to get to his feet. “Sherlock,” she yelled, and, as he turned to head toward her, she slid the gun along the floor. In what seemed like slow motion, she watched Sherlock dive for the weapon as the other man’s gun went off. The bullet nicked Sherlock’s thigh, but he ignored it, grabbing the gun and returning fire on the man, who immediately fell to the floor.
Bullets started to come from the direction of the shower room. Buddha had obviously made it to wherever he had left his weapon. But there had to be more she could do—at a minimum she wanted to be able to protect herself if they got to her. She hurried back to the gun safe and repeated the steps Mac had explained on the phone. She saw from the way Sherlock had moved as he’d fired the gun that there was going to be a lot of kickback and it was going to be difficult to handle, but it was better than being a sitting duck.
“Delaney, we’re less than a minute away. How many people are inside? Be our eyes to make sure it’s safe.”
Picking up a gun, she ran back to the doors. Sherlock had made his way to the other side of the warehouse leaving her alone at that end of the building. “Buddha and Ryder are down by the medical center, and I see three men.” Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fourth appeared right in front of her, his face lining up with hers through the narrow pane of glass. It was him. The guy who had tried to break into her apartment. Delaney screamed as he pulled his gun level with her and pulled the trigger, but miraculously, the glass stopped the bullet and the doors remained locked.
Blood splattered the window, and the man fell to the floor, obviously shot from behind by Sherlock or Buddha. She didn’t have the time to thank them, or to puke, which was what her stomach was telling her to do. She breathed deeply, trying to keep the waves of nausea at bay.
Turning on her heel, she ran back along the corridor to the conference room, noting the shadows of people outside the front entrance. Mac had asked her to be his eyes, and doing so would also give her something to focus on. “I think there are a couple of people trying to get in through the front,” she said, her throat dry. She slammed the door shut and locked it. “I’m back in the conference room.” She raced to the monitors. “Yes. There are definitely two people trying to get in through the front. There are four people already inside, there are two cars in the parking lot—the driver is still in one of them—and … oh my God. Ghost is down on the floor outside, but I can’t see how badly he’s hurt because the lights have been blown out.”
“Good girl,” Mac said. She heard car door
s slam. “We’re coming in.”
* * *
They’d pulled over down the street a little, even though it would have been faster to pull up right to the front door. But this gave them the element of surprise, and allowed them to cast a wide net so that nobody could escape. Plus, it gave them the opportunity to scope things out a little before they were right in the middle of the action. The sound of gunfire, though, had them heading toward the building at a dead run.
“Same teams,” Mac called as he hotfooted it across the parking lot. “How many still inside, Sherlock?” He needed the details that would help them once they were in. There’d been plenty of times in his career when he’d had no information at all, when they’d had to drop in blind to a situation and figure it all out on the fly, though, and either way, their training would kick in and make it work. But today, when it was Delaney on the line, he wanted as much information as possible.
“One down, three left,” Sherlock replied. “I’ve got the door to the offices covered. Nobody is getting to Delaney right now. And we’re by medical, so we have Lou covered.”
He couldn’t think about how Delaney was isolated in the offices without any kind of cover because if he did, his whole world would fall apart. But there was one detail that could help put his mind at rest.
“Buttons, are you armed?” He thought about the weapons they’d all taken with them, many of which would have been perfect for Delaney. Instead, all that was left were high-grade assault rifles and various pieces of heavy-duty equipment. Should they all make it through this, he was going to see what he could do to fast-track her license and gun ownership.
“I am,” she said, her voice wavering. “I’m in the conference room. The doors are locked, and I’ve barricaded some of the tables up against it. But I don’t think it will stop somebody if they really want to get in here.”
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