by Paige Tyler
Khaki quickly put on her tactical gear and pulled the straps snug, then climbed into the SUV with Cooper, Becker, and Alex. All they knew was that a little girl had been kidnapped and the DPD wanted their help with the rescue.
The on-scene commander, an older lieutenant named Matthews, filled them in as soon as they got to the subdivision.
“The girl’s name is Melissa Kincaide. She was taken a little over an hour and a half ago,” he said as they all gathered around the back of the SWAT operations vehicle.
Well, not all of them. Trevor was in the operations vehicle with one of the city’s civilian negotiators, trying to establish communications with the man who owned the house they were parked down the street from.
“The mother and two other neighbors were with their children waiting for the bus to take them to school this morning,” Matthews continued. “As they were getting on the bus, the suspect drove up and grabbed Melissa, then sped away.”
“Any chance they misidentified the suspect?” Xander asked.
The lieutenant shook his head. “No. All three of the adults and half the kids recognized Clete Reynolds. They’ve seen him around the neighborhood.”
Khaki didn’t miss the worried looks that passed between her teammates. She hadn’t dealt with a lot of hostage situations, but it couldn’t be good that the man hadn’t even tried to hide his face during the abduction, hadn’t cared if someone recognized him.
“And before you even ask, there isn’t any family connection between the little girl and Reynolds,” the lieutenant added. “It’s as if he simply wanted to grab one of the kids at the bus stop and Melissa was the one he ended up with. When a patrol car showed up, he shot at them. My guys pulled back and set up the barricades, then got the nearby houses evacuated. One of the officers slipped around the back of the place and peeked in a few windows. He never saw the girl, but the suspect is in there with an arsenal of weapons.”
Xander continued talking to the on-scene commander while she and the guys got their weapons. Even though Khaki was new to all this, she had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well.
Trevor came out of the operations vehicle as Khaki was double-checking her M4, worry etching his brow.
“We’ve been trying to talk Reynolds into coming out, or at least letting the girl go, but the guy isn’t exactly rational,” he said. “I can’t even confirm the man has the girl, much less where he’s holding her. One second he’s telling me he hasn’t done anything wrong, and the next he’s shouting that he’ll die before he lets us take away what’s his. I’ll keep trying, but this guy has a hair trigger. He could snap at any second.”
Xander nodded, then turned to her and the rest of the guys. “We don’t have time for a detailed plan, so we’ll just keep it simple. We have a one-floor ranch with a basement. Since the patrol officer didn’t see the girl when he looked in the windows, there’s a good chance she’s in the basement. Max and Hale, I want you two on the back, right side. Alex and Khaki, you have the back side left. Max, the power box is on your corner, so you’ll kill the power on my word.”
“Roger that,” Max said.
“Cooper, Becker, and I will be at the front of the house,” Xander continued. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to lure Reynolds there while the rest of you find the girl and get her out. We’ll try to take Reynolds alive, but Melissa Kincaide is our first priority. Everyone stay alert. We go in on my command.”
Khaki’s heart raced as she and the guys approached the house. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the terrified people lining the police barricades at the end of the street. Lieutenant Matthews was standing off to one side trying to comfort a woman who was probably Melissa’s mother. The woman was holding on to a little girl’s Hello Kitty book bag and a pretty pink cardigan sweater for dear life. The moment the woman saw them moving toward the house, she broke loose from the lieutenant’s hold and dashed around the barricade, running straight to Khaki.
“He took my little girl,” the woman sobbed, clutching Khaki’s arm. “You have to bring her back to me. Please.”
Khaki opened her mouth to reassure her, but the woman didn’t give Khaki a chance.
“Take this,” she beseeched, shoving the little pink sweater into Khaki’s hand. “Lissa dropped it. She’s going to need it when you find her. She gets cold so easily.”
Tears misted Khaki’s eyes and she blinked them away as she gently put the sweater back in the woman’s hands. “We’re going to bring your little girl out of there safe and sound, and when we do, you can give Melissa her sweater, okay?”
The woman nodded, fresh sobs racking her body as she clutched the sweater to her chest. Then Matthews was there, securing the woman in a firm but gentle grip. The lieutenant gave Khaki a nod before leading the woman back toward the barricade.
Khaki turned to catch up to the team to find them waiting for her.
“You ready for this?” Xander asked in that same soft voice he’d used when he taught her how to shift enough to see in the dark.
She nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Good.” The corner of his mouth edged up. “Be careful, huh?”
“You too.”
She and Alex used the neighborhood houses as cover as they moved around to the back of the suspect’s house. In broad daylight like this, it would be hard to sneak up on this guy, but they had to try.
As they got into position, she heard Trevor giving status updates to Xander in her earpiece. It didn’t sound like it was going very well. According to Trevor, the kidnapper was starting to lose it.
Khaki dropped to one knee near the window closest to her and peeked through the blinds into the bedroom. Alex motioned with his hand, pointing at himself, then the window, then her. He’d go through the window first while she covered him. She nodded.
Her hand tightened around her M4 as she waited for Xander to give the order to move in. This was her first real SWAT mission. She didn’t count the bank job because that hadn’t been a planned situation and there hadn’t been a hostage. This was different. There was a little girl in there who would likely die if they screwed up.
Khaki took a breath and let it out slowly, forcing herself to relax. If they ended up in the basement, she had to be ready to let her eyes shift. She replayed Xander’s words from their lesson.
Picture yourself running barefoot through the forest. Now imagine yourself opening your eyes wider, letting every flicker of light in to fill the darkness.
Khaki felt her eyes start to shift when she heard a man yelling from inside the house quickly followed by gunshots, breaking glass, and the clank of bullets hitting the cars along the street. Her first thought was of Xander and the guys who’d been heading through the front, and she sagged with relief when she heard him give the order to kill the power and enter the house.
Alex launched himself through the window, taking out the glass, most of the framework, and the curtains on the other side. Khaki leaped in after him, covering him as he got to his feet and tossed the curtains aside.
Khaki heard other windows breaking as she and Alex headed out of the bedroom and down a long hallway toward the center of the house. The other members of the squad would be moving in the same direction soon enough.
They’d just reached the end of the hallway when a middle-aged man with a beard and a shotgun came running. He glanced at her and Alex, eyes wide and crazy as he pivoted and headed down another hallway. No wonder Trevor thought Reynolds was losing it. The guy didn’t only sound insane; he looked it.
She gave chase, putting on speed when she realized he was heading for the basement. Dammit!
“He’s going to the basement,” she yelled, following Reynolds down the stairs.
Khaki let her nose lead her until she felt her eyes shift. The sound of a trigger being squeezed made her slam on the brakes, and she threw herself backward as the roar of a shotgun filled the tight stairwell.
Behind her, Alex must have sensed what she was about to do because he
jumped back at the same time. The shotgun blew a ragged hole about the size of her head in the sheetrock wall beside her. Luckily, Reynolds missed her by a figurative mile. The debris from the sheetrock hadn’t even hit the floor before she was on her feet and running again, Alex right behind her.
She reached the basement only a few steps behind Reynolds. Unable to see as well as they could in the dark, he seemed more interested in not running into anything than in shooting at her and Alex again. That was okay with Khaki.
Unfortunately, she didn’t see the little girl anywhere. But they’d caught Reynolds. It would just be a matter of time before they rescued Melissa.
Khaki reached out to grab Reynolds by the shirt when he simply dropped out of sight. She skidded to a halt just in time to keep from falling into a ragged hole in the concrete floor.
“What the hell?” Alex muttered as he came around from behind her to see why she’d stopped.
She didn’t have an answer. All she knew was that it was so dark she had trouble seeing anything in it—even with her eyes shifted.
Boots echoed on the stairs. A moment later Xander was beside her.
“What have we got?” he asked.
Cooper squatted beside the hole. “We got a tunnel rat, that’s what we got.”
Then, without another word, he hopped into the hole.
Khaki didn’t think. She simply let her eyes open as wide as they would go to let in as much light as possible, and dropped into the blackness after Cooper.
It was a short trip to the bottom. She looked around, trying to get her bearings as she moved away from the hole so the other guys could join them.
“Holy crud,” Becker whispered. “It’s a freaking maze down here.”
Khaki silently agreed. They’d landed in the central hub of a network of tunnels that Reynolds had dug under his house. From where she was standing, she could see five main tunnels running off in different directions with smaller tunnels branching off from the main routes. Sheets of plywood and four-by-four beams shored up the ceiling and walls, and little trickles of dirt drifted from every gap.
“What the hell is that smell?” Max asked, covering his nose with his gloved hand.
Khaki didn’t blame him. Her nose had started to burn the moment she’d hit the ground. She’d never smelled anything like it, which was saying a lot. She’d spent her time in a lot of drug dens and meth labs out in Lakefront, and while the odor down here was similar, it definitely wasn’t the same.
“I don’t know,” Xander said. “But let’s not spend any more time down here than we have to. Spread out in teams of two. We need to find Reynolds before he gets to that little girl.”
Khaki paired up with Cooper, thanking God over and over that Xander had taught her how to shift her eyes. If she had to use her nose in here, she wasn’t sure she could do it. The place reeked.
She and Cooper had only gone about twenty feet when they heard gunfire. She turned and raced back the way they’d come, tracking the sounds of a scuffle down one of the other main tunnels, Cooper on her heels.
They got there along with everyone else, just in time to see Hale pinning Reynolds to the ground, a zip tie already on the man’s wrists, the shotgun lying in the dirt about ten feet away.
When Hale hauled the guy to his feet, Xander flipped on his flashlight and shined it in the man’s face “Where’s the little girl? Is she down here?”
Reynolds squinted against the light, babbling incoherently and shaking his head from side to side. Whether he was freaked out because he’d just gotten his ass kicked by a group of cops with glowing eyes or simply spent too much time down here inhaling these fumes was anyone’s guess. Regardless, they weren’t going to get anything out of him.
“What the hell is this stuff?”
Khaki turned to see Max holding up a mason jar of honey-colored liquid. He angled the jar toward Xander’s light, shaking it as he tried to figure out what it was. Beside him, there were several pallets of the jars, stacked high on top of each other.
“You think he was making moonshine down here?” Max shook the jar again. “If it is, what’re all these sparkly things floating in it?”
Cooper brushed past Khaki. “Stop shaking the jar, Max.”
Max frowned down at the jar in his hand and shook it some more. “Why? What is it?”
“Stop shaking the fucking jar, you moron!” Cooper growled so loudly that a sprinkle of dirt from the roof of the tunnel rained down around them.
“I finally figured out what this smell is,” Cooper said, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of them. “It’s nitric acid. This crazy son of a bitch has been trying to make his own explosives. Those sparkly things are nitric salts. You treat them too rough, and we’re gone. Hell, with all the jars on those pallets, a good portion of the neighborhood is gone with us.”
The tunnel went dead quiet. Even Reynolds stopped babbling.
“What do I do with it?” Max asked softly.
“You put it down,” Cooper advised. “Slowly.”
Outside, Matthews must have heard every word Cooper said through his mic because the lieutenant told them he wanted them out of there ASAP.
“We need to get Explosive Ordnance Disposal down there to clear those tunnels before we look for the girl,” Matthews added.
“Lieutenant, as bad as the air is down here, that girl will be dead long before EOD can get through this place,” Xander said into his mic. “It might take days.”
“Dammit,” Matthews swore. “Clear out as many members of your team as you can. I want essential personnel in there only. And find that little girl—fast.”
Khaki expected Xander to say that everyone on his team was essential, but he pointed at her and Cooper. “You two are staying. Everyone else out.”
The guys looked at Xander as if he were crazy. Khaki could imagine what they were thinking. Cooper was former Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal. But what the hell did Khaki bring to the table? She had to admit, she wasn’t sure either.
“Max, Hale, Alex, Becker—out,” Xander ordered. “Now.”
Khaki could tell from the looks on their faces they didn’t like it, but they went, dragging a dazed and confused Reynolds with them.
Xander turned off his radio, then motioned for her and Cooper to do the same. “Khaki, I need you to find that little girl.”
She blinked. “What? How can I do that?”
“You can pick up her scent.”
Of course. Xander thought that with her exceptional sense of smell, she could track the girl despite the reeking, burning chemical odor permeating every inch of the tunnels.
“Maybe,” Khaki agreed. “If I knew what she smelled like, but I don’t.”
Xander’s golden eyes were bright in the dark. “Yes, you do. I know for a fact that you got a whiff of that little girl’s pink sweater when her mom shoved it into your hand. You smell, and remember, everything. You just have to find her scent in that head of yours.”
Cooper’s brows furrowed. “What the hell are you talking about? No werewolf could smell a damn thing in here. We’re wasting time. We need to start searching.”
Xander gave him a hard look. “She can do this. Her nose doesn’t work like ours. It’s better.”
Khaki vaguely remembered picking up a lot of odors when Melissa’s mom had grabbed her. There was the smell of cotton and polyester, laundry detergent, eggs and bacon, some kind of furniture polish, peanut butter cookies, even the salty scent of tears. There were so many scents to shift through. And the horrible chemical smells down here didn’t help.
She shook her head. “Xander, I don’t think I can do it.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “We need to find her now. We don’t have time to wander around down here searching. You can do this. I know you can.”
The confidence in those words almost brought tears to Khaki’s eyes. She thought of Melissa’s mother sobbing and begging Khaki to find her little girl. Then she thou
ght of Melissa. Wherever she was, she was probably terrified.
“I’ll try,” Khaki told Xander.
His mouth curved. “That’s all I can ask.”
Taking a deep breath, Khaki slung her M4 across her back, dropped down to her knees, and closed her eyes. Off to her right, she sensed Cooper move closer. She knew that Xander was keeping him away.
She shut them out and began to sort through the myriad smells down there surrounding her. She forced her nose to dive down under the harsh chemical odor, to ignore it and push it to the back of her mind so she could distinguish other scents.
She smelled dirt, of course. And Xander. Cooper too.
She scrunched up her nose and dug deeper, finding Reynolds’s smell—stale sweat paired with booze and urine. Underneath that, she picked up the faint trace of moles and rats that had long since left the tunnels.
And then, when she was about to give up, she found what she was looking for—the scent of peanut butter cookies and little girl tears.
Khaki jumped to her feet and ran toward the central hub of the tunnels, letting her nose lead the way.
Behind her, Xander ordered Cooper to stick tight to her so she wouldn’t get herself blown to pieces. Cooper obeyed, running so close to her he might as well have been glued to her side as she ran through the tunnels.
Khaki was so focused on the little girl’s scent she didn’t even see the tripwire stretched across the tunnel until she heard it break. The explosion echoed in her ears and thumped her in the chest, squeezing every ounce of air out of her lungs and picking her up to throw her down the tunnel.
Surprisingly, she didn’t pass out—at least, she didn’t think so. When she got her wits back, she was lying on the floor of the tunnel, something heavy pinning her legs. She pushed herself up on an elbow to see what it was and found a muscular arm draped over her. She couldn’t tell whether it was Xander or Cooper because the rest of him was buried under a slide of sandy clay soil. Crap. The tunnel had collapsed. She looked around and saw Cooper pushing himself into a sitting position a little farther up the tunnel.
