He worked silently, unbolting the steel casing that locked the window into place. Finally, he replaced the wrench with a lever bar and eased the top of the window outward, toward him. The sound of metal scraping metal seemed way too loud, so Mori feigned a coughing fit to cover the noise, ignoring the pain each movement caused.
Finally, the window came free of the frame. Mori sat up fast, dragging the bedspread across her back with enough roughness that the room swirled in gray. She hung her head and clutched the thin mattress on either side of her, willing herself not to faint. Not now. Not when the fresh, warm air had already begun filtering into the room.
“Mori?” The man’s whisper was so soft she wasn’t sure he’d really spoken until she raised her head and found him watching her intently. “Stay where you are for now. The house isn’t secure yet.”
She gave a slight nod to show she understood. He grinned, balanced the window on his thighs, and looked upward. Just as slowly as he’d lowered himself into view, someone from above began pulling him up. Soon, all she could see were legs, then boots, then nothing.
The hot air spilling in from the outside smelled like freedom. A plane flew overhead. Birds sang in the gardens below, the gurgling of the fountain like laughter in the background. Mori closed her eyes and let the warmth seep into her. Funny how hope lessened the pain in her back, the promise of help erasing the fatigue and hunger.
At a loud squawk from the window, Mori opened her eyes, no longer surprised to see the eagle sitting in the open frame. It stared at her a moment, then swiveled its head and leaned in a fraction, studying the cameras in the facing corners. Why hadn’t Mori realized before? This could well be an eagle-shifter. Maybe Kell hadn’t seemed freaked out about the existence of jaguarundi-shifters because he worked with an eagle.
Or was that too far-fetched? How would an Army guy get mixed up with a shape-shifter?
She’d assumed the big dark-haired guy was a member of Kell’s team, but maybe she was wrong. If there were shifters involved, she wasn’t sure who was rescuing her — or why.
CHAPTER 22
Nik rattled his bag of chips as he dug the last crumbs out of the bottom. The noise grated on Kell’s last nerve. “Where’d Gadget scrounge up this lawn-service van?”
Kell’s eyes maintained a sweeping scan of the neighborhood a block from Michael Benedict’s house. The clock on the van’s dash read 6:58 a.m., and they’d been here for a half hour, hoping anyone who spotted them would assume they were part of the bayou lawn service crew. Just two green thumbs sitting in their baby-puke-green van and waiting till it was time to clock in and prune some roses.
“He has a cousin who owns the place and didn’t mind loaning it out, no questions asked,” Kell said. “And if you rattle that bag one more time, I’m gonna hurt you.”
He was spared from having to apologize — again — by the buzz of his phone. He’d set the Gator ringtone to silent mode for this operation.
“Window’s out.” Archer’s voice was soft.
“How’s Mori?” Yeah, Kell’s first question should have been if the kitty had run into complications, or had seen anything else in the security setup they needed to know about, or had a visual on Michael Benedict. But they’d already established that Kell’s priorities had been screwed six ways to Sunday. “You see her?”
“She’s OK. Looks a little unsteady, but she’s following direction and knows the house isn’t secure yet. Robin’s on standby. As soon as the lights on the security cameras go down, she’s ready to enter. Also got the make of the front door lock for you — Schnabel.”
Good. An easy dead bolt to bump and he had what he needed to do it.
Kell glanced at the clock. “Give Benedict until eight o’clock to leave. We move as soon as he’s out. If he hasn’t left by then, we move anyway. Wait for my signal.”
He ended the call and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Talk about a hastily conceived mission plan. He’d had some fucked-up assignments over the years, but none with more unknowns than this one. Human enemies at least had physical limitations. Who knew how many shifters might be inside, what kind they were, or what they could do?
One thing Benedict’s people had almost assuredly done — murdered Carl Felderman. The governor had been killed with a single rifle shot to the head, by someone who knew what he was doing. A single-shot kill through an upper-floor hotel window at long range was classic sharpshooter fare. At least, that’s what was being reported on the radio. After he and Nik had heard the gunshot and ran a quick check to make sure Felderman couldn’t be saved, they’d hustled back to Nik’s apartment to plan the mission.
“So?” Nik checked the clip in his weapon for at least the third time. “How’s our target?”
Kell knew what his friend was doing, but referring to Mori as a target wasn’t going to make him forget that this extraction meant more to him than duty. “Don’t sweat it, Nik. I’m not going to fuck up the mission.” Especially this mission.
“Garage door.” Nik straightened in his seat, and Kell leaned forward and grabbed the small binoculars from the dash. The recessed garage doors on the east side of the house slid open slowly, revealing a black Lexus that backed out the short drive to the side street.
Kell squinted through the binoculars’ viewfinder and adjusted the focus until a well-groomed head of dark hair was visible in the driver’s seat. “So long, asshole.”
“It’s Benedict?” Nik reached behind his seat and fished out his gear belt. They’d agreed that packs would be too bulky and tried to anticipate anything they might need. If all else failed, they had combat knives as well as their firearms.
“Himself. And alone.” Kell speed-dialed Gadget, who’d been working from New Orleans to identify the estate’s security system.
Gadget answered on the first ring. “Are we a go?”
“Yep. Tell me what we know.”
Kell heard the clicks of a keyboard as Gadget did his magic. “OK, I was able to procure a schematic from the files of the company that installed the system.”
Procure was Gadget-speak for steal, but Kell could live with that. He switched the phone to speaker so Nik could hear. “What are we dealing with?”
“Two separate units.” More clicks in the background while Gadget talked. “The first is a standard setup that monitors open doors and windows on the first floor only. No motion sensors. All the alarms link to the main power supply, located inside the garage door. Cut the power, and you have thirty seconds to get inside the house and close the door behind you before it switches to battery backup. If a door or window is open at that point, an intruder signal goes straight to the police.”
Kell took notes from Gadget’s descriptions and sketched the house and location of the power cables. “What about the second system?”
“That one’s just for the attic, and it’s new — installed about a month ago.”
That fucking jerk had been planning Mori’s abduction since before the bombing? What kind of hold did Benedict have over her that she’d handcuffed Kell in that hotel room and gone straight to him?
Nik cleared his throat, and Kell mentally slapped himself back into focus. There would be time later to get answers. “What’s the setup?”
“There’s a central monitoring station on the first floor. The work order describes it as a study on the west side of the house,” Gadget said. “Five monitors are installed there, plus a sixth in the attic. The first-floor monitors get feeds from the attic cameras, and the attic monitor gets audio and video from a computer cam in the study. Again, one basic set of lines running into that single computer, and no battery backup on that one. No alarms, either. Benedict must’ve been pretty sure no one would come to save her.”
Cocky bastard. At least it made things easier for Kell’s team.
After getting a few more details from Gadget and ending the call, Kell handed his notes to Nik. “Sounds like a pretty basic setup. We’ll stay linked with our headsets. Take out the main power ca
bles. Let me know just before you flip the switch, and I’ll use that thirty-second window to get inside. It’ll look like a power failure. Take out whoever comes to check the fuse box.”
He stared at the house, thinking. “Call Archer and tell him to create a distraction on the east side of the house as soon as you get in the garage. Maybe we can draw the staff to that area so I can get to the study and take down the attic security.”
“Got it.” Nik tossed the notes on the console as Kell cranked the van and moved it to a spot on the side street just out of view of the garage. Thank God for corner lots.
Kell slipped his own belt into place and pulled on a pair of thin, lightweight gloves. No fingerprints at this scene. He wedged a wireless headset into his ear and nodded at Nik, who’d donned his own headset before calling Archer with the plan. It would be important to stay in voice contact from here on. He wished he’d asked Robin to strap a headset to her leg.
They walked to the edge of the property, and Kell slipped behind a broad-leafed palm to wait. The security cameras on this side of the house were trained on the driveway, so if anyone were monitoring them, they wouldn’t see Nik’s cautious approach to the garage door. Benedict was arrogant enough to not be watching the general monitors, though. Kell would bet his next paycheck all eyes would be on the video feed from the attic.
Kell waited as Nik slipped a long wire from the side pocket of his cargo pants, leapt like a monkey onto a ledge beside the garage, and threaded the wire through the top of the wide door. The two minutes it took him to hook the wire onto the release catch dangling from the electronic door-opening mechanism seemed to last a week, but finally, Nik eased himself back to the ground and raised the garage door manually.
He looked back at Kell and nodded.
“Showtime, Kitten,” Kell muttered. A few seconds later, a sleek black jaguar — what he’d always called a black cougar or panther until Archer and Adam haughtily corrected him — slinked around the side of the house, looking in windows. Kell had seen the brothers in cat form a lot during their training, but the size still amazed him. This “kitten” easily packed three hundred pounds of muscle and teeth.
A face appeared on the inside of a first-floor window, looking out at Archer. Kell grinned; he could see the guy’s mouth drop open even from across the lawn. Shouts followed from within the house.
Archer began his routine, racing in circles around the side lawn, rolling on his back in the grass, and finally, stopping to swipe a tongue the size of a baby blanket across one massive paw. One lick, two licks, three — he’d spotted three people.
Kell nodded. Good odds for success if that was all of them. Now it was showtime for him.
He pushed Mori as far back in his mind as he could get her and skirted the outer edges of the property, ducking from one landscaping feature to the next until he reached the front corner of the house. No more cover remained.
Figuring a man wearing dark clothes in the late-August heat would attract more attention running than walking, Kell said a quick prayer and broke the cover of the azalea stand. He strode up the circular drive to the arched front door and waited, the tools to pop the dead bolt in his right hand. “In position,” he whispered.
It seemed like an eon passed before Nik responded: “Turning the juice off in three…two…one…now.”
Kell had knelt in front of the door during Nik’s countdown. Now, he inserted a blank Schnabel key into the lockset, pressing and turning while he tapped firmly on the key with the end of a screwdriver. His muscles told him to hurry, to do it fast, but his brain overrode his body’s panic response. He finally heard the bolt slide with a click.
Easing the door open, he stepped inside and closed it softly behind him. According to his watch, he’d had four seconds to spare. Not bad for a broken-down soldier. “In,” he told the others in a whisper.
He crouched behind a table in a recessed section of an ornate circular foyer to get his bearings. Above his head rose a curved staircase with a wrought-iron banister. To his far left lay what looked like the entrance to a formal dining room. He’d guess the door to the right of the staircase, opening to the west, was either the study or led to the study.
“It’s just a fucking power outage. Either that or the AC’s working so hard to cool this place that it’s flipped a breaker. What d’you make of that cat?”
Kell ducked lower, squinting through a profusion of leaves from a potted plant as two men walked into the foyer from the room on the left. One was about his height, one a bit shorter. The shorter man wore jeans and a T-shirt. Muscle, probably. No surprise there. The tall guy wore a button-front shirt and khakis. Maybe a regular member of the house staff.
“Don’t know, but it’s gone now, so forget it. Go to the garage and check the breaker.” The shorter of the men pointed the taller guy toward the dining area. Kell figured a kitchen must lead off from there, and the garage door probably led into the kitchen. “I’ll make sure the monitors in the study have gone to backup.”
The taller man laughed. “Yeah right, Travis. You’re hoping the chick in the attic will be taking a shower.”
“Fuck yeah.”
A flash of anger threatened to dash Kell’s shaky calm. So the short dude with the brown hair was Travis, one of the jaguarundi-shifters who’d turned the governor into a freak and maybe even the one who’d killed him. He’d done his jaguarundi research. The cats weren’t very big, but he’d learned from Robin that, in a shape-shifter, size was no indicator of strength.
As soon as the tall guy was out of sight and Travis had disappeared through the door to the right, Kell eased out from behind the plant table, wincing at the stab of fire that shot from his back all the way down his right leg. No time to let it warm up. At least one of Benedict’s people remained unaccounted for.
He pulled his weapon and eased the slide back, ready to fire. A quick look inside the door revealed no one, so Kell stepped softly into a long rectangular living room. Despite overstuffed furniture made for lounging and a huge fireplace, the room looked anything but lived-in. It was as cold and sterile as the rest of Benedict’s palace.
A cold stab of hatred shot through Kell’s veins as he passed the fireplace and noticed a long metal rod with a “B” formed on the end. Its rustic craftsmanship clashed with the elegance of the room and the white mantel on which it rested. It was the branding iron, with caked-on ashes at the end that had once been Mori’s skin.
Kell promised himself he would kill Michael Benedict or die trying. But not this morning. His first priority was Mori’s safety.
Voices wafted from a doorway at the far end of the room. Male. At least two of them. Kell walked softly along the wall, his weapon held in front of him.
He paused outside the open doorway. Definitely two guys talking. If there was a third, he was silent.
“Wish that goddamn woman would do something. She just lies there wrapped up in that bedspread like a mummy.” A nasal voice, high in pitch.
“Yeah, but you shoulda seen her last night.” Travis — that voice, Kell recognized from the foyer. “Naked as anybody’s business. Nice tits and ass. You wait; watching the bitch will be a detail we’ll fight over.”
Not happening.
Kell stepped into the doorway, glad to see both guys had their backs turned as they hunched over a monitor. He’d focus on Travis and keep the other guy in his sights. “Wrong, Travis.”
Both men whirled to stare at him, and for a moment, all three of them were frozen in place. Then chaos erupted as Travis pulled a weapon and Kell fired twice in quick succession.
Before Travis hit the floor, Kell turned the gun on his companion — who’d disappeared. What the fuck?
At a scrambling noise behind him, Kell rotated fast, aiming at eye level, and saw nothing.
He scanned the room as Nik’s voice sounded in the headset: “Location?”
“Study.” Kell glanced at the monitors, and his heart stopped at the sight of Mori curled on her side, her blond ha
ir barely visible over the top of the covers. He reached behind the computer and jerked out all the wires, not worrying about which one led to which camera. He wanted them all off.
At a hiss from above him, Kell twisted, his gaze locking on that of a jaguarundi atop a bookcase. He raised his gun but never got off a shot. The Beretta hit the floor with a clatter as a blur of sharp claws and gray fur rained hell on his upturned face.
CHAPTER 23
There was a flurry of noise, then silence. What surely had to be a series of gunshots sounded from outside the hole where the window had been — guess the soundproofing couldn’t extend to the outside. The cameras in the corners emitted long beeps and went dead in unison, no red lights visible. And the eagle screeched loud enough to be heard in Mexico, hopping from the windowsill onto the bedroom floor with a flutter of broad reddish-brown wings.
Mori sat up, the pain in her back momentarily forgotten as the eagle grew and blurred, leaving in its place a kneeling waif of a girl with spiky auburn hair and huge brown eyes. Well, that answered the question of whether or not the eagle was a shifter. Which meant she’d been tailing Mori all the way back to the night of her birthday.
“You’ve been following me. Who are you?”
“Name’s Robin. Yeah, yeah, I know — stupid name for an eagle-shifter.” The girl rose from a crouch to her full height of maybe five feet. Maybe. “What can I say? My parents were hippies with a warped sense of humor.”
Mori stood too fast, causing the room to spin. Before she could sink back to the bed, Robin placed a hand on each arm and twirled her around with surprising strength.
“Drop the bedspread and let me look at your back. The cameras are off.”
Mori hesitated, not because she was modest, but because she was ashamed. Ashamed for another shifter to see the proof that she’d allowed someone to brand her like a cow, to treat her like property. That she’d walked into it with such naïveté.
Omega Force 01- Storm Force Page 17
