28. Chapter 28
28
W ith the rescued magicals all around her, both her teams waiting for her next order, and a desperately pleading witch—so exhausted and malnourished she could hardly stand—clinging to Rebecca’s arms for support and in desperation, Rebecca could hardly breathe.
There was an entire warehouse full of even more abducted civilians who needed their help. How had this crucial information gotten past her recon teams when every other piece of intel they’d gathered had been on point?
She didn’t even have time to think about it. Not really.
Over two dozen innocents waited around for someone to decide what would happen to them next, most of them in far worse shape than the witch in Rebecca’s arms. She’d only taken two teams out here tonight for two small ambush operations. How prepared were they, really, to take the word of one rescued prisoner?
Enough to go up against Harkennr’s forces stationed at a holding facility they’d only just discovered? And how much could she trust this witch in her arms?
“Please,” the witch pleaded again as she gazed up at Rebecca and seemed to regain a little more of her strength. “We have to help them.”
“Maddie, what’s your sister’s name?” Rebecca asked.
“Lacey. She’s all alone in there, terrified. She has no idea what’s happening, and I’m not the only one who knows people they’re still holding in there.”
Tears shimmered in Maddie’s brown eyes. Crying wouldn’t make this easier. Rebecca didn’t think she could handle it right now.
“Okay, Maddie,” she said. “Why don’t you take a seat for just a second. Rest. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.” The witch’s voice trembled as she held back her tears, though she seemed unable to release Rebecca’s hands before she finally let someone else guide her away to sit down, hopefully before she keeled over with exhaustion.
Rebecca turned toward Maxwell and nodded for him to step away with her for a more private discussion. He didn’t hesitate, nor did he wait for her to start their conversation. He already knew what it was about.
“It’s not the prison,” he murmured.
“You don’t think we’d be up against just as much security and heavy artillery there?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Each of the vehicles we intercepted were only manned by two soldiers. They weren’t prepared for something like this, and they hardly put up a fight. The prisoners are all dirty and starving.”
“That could just be part of the process before he starts experimenting on them.”
“It could be. But I don’t think Harkennr would evenly split his resources between two or more facilities. I think he’s pouring everything into the prison, and the rest of this is just an outside operation he keeps running on the bare minimum.”
“We’ll have to confirm it.” Rebecca looked over her shoulder. Maddie the witch seemed to have calmed down but wouldn’t stop staring at Rebecca and Maxwell, as if enough focus would let her hear their conversation. “We’ll talk to Maddie again and some of the others too. See how much their stories match up first.”
“It has to be quick, either way.” Maxwell scanned the scattered groups of rescued prisoners, his frown darkening. “If we sit on this and wait to confirm what the witch said, Harkennr will hear about the convoys one way or another. If we move tonight, we still have surprise on our side. At this warehouse, it might just be enough to give us the upper hand.”
Rebecca nodded. She’d had the same thought. A decision needed to be made immediately, and once it was, there would be no opportunity to change her mind.
“What if it’s a trap?” she asked.
Maxwell leaned toward her and lowered his voice even further. “You think he might have planted that witch because he knew we were moving on his shipments tonight? That he put her there with the others to lead us back to the warehouse on purpose?”
She folded her arms and tried not to cringe at how much worse it sounded spoken out loud. “It’s possible.”
“But you don’t really think that’s what’s happening right now.”
No, she didn’t. She would have bet anything he could feel that in her too right now, the same way she felt the shifter’s unflinching readiness to go above and beyond what their original mission had called for tonight.
“I don’t,” she said. “No one can fake that kind of desperation. There’s no way Harkennr could’ve known we were coming for him. Not any that I can see.”
“I agree.”
His words were perfectly clear, but in that moment, Rebecca heard him saying they needed to move, to trust Maddie the witch, that neither of their consciences would be clean if they turned away from this responsibility tonight.
Maxwell had already made his decision, and, Rebecca realized, so had she.
“When’s the recovery team supposed to be here?” she asked.
His eyes widened before he nodded toward something over her shoulder. “Now. And right on time.”
Rebecca turned to see four Shade vehicles, two of them recently purchased with the task force’s newly inherited funds, slowing along the shoulder as they reached the field before turning in to join Rebecca and her teams.
At least this was coming together easily enough that she had no viable reason to say no.
“Okay. We’re gonna have to pivot a little on this one. Get some food out to these prisoners, and I want a running list of every civilian who not only wants to hit back tonight but who’s physically capable of it. I’m not putting anyone in harm’s way if they can’t even stand, no matter how badly they want to be there.”
Maxwell dipped his head. “We might have more volunteers than you think.”
“Good thing I trust you to assess who can handle another fight and who can’t, then choose as many operatives on the rescue team as you think we can spare to come with us. We move out at zero two thirty.”
“Consider it done.”
The shifter set his jaw so tightly, she wondered if she’d taken it too far and made a call with which he strongly disagreed.
But then he leaned toward her again, his closeness sending blazing shivers of energy rippling down her face and the front of her body as his silver eyes centered on her. He opened his mouth, closed it again as if reconsidering, then looked like he was about to reach for her before thinking better of it.
Instead, he set a hand on her shoulder.
The normally reassuring gesture sent a jolting shock of warmth and weight and tingling frenzy rippling through her, as if his hand on her shoulder had taken full control. Rebecca leaned into him, pulled by that ever-present thread connecting them in ways and for reasons still aggravatingly unknown.
She thought she felt his grip tightening, fingers digging in with increasing pressure as his silver eyes flashed at her.
Everything around them disappeared beneath the private world suddenly formed from his hand on her shoulder as their gazes locked, the darkness and the need and something ancient and unknown calling to Rebecca.
Calling to them both now. She could feel it.
For those brief seconds, nothing else had ever or would ever exist.
Then the pressure of Maxwell’s grip relaxed slightly, and when he spoke, Rebecca could almost feel the enormous effort of anchoring himself here in the present, with everything else they still had to do.
“The right way,” he murmured.
Rebecca could only nod, nearly incapacitated by this thing between them, until Maxwell removed his hand from her shoulder—slowly, shakily, as if he couldn’t bear to let go.
As soon as he did, the rest of the world came flooding back into her awareness. The moment was over. The present had returned, and with it, Rebecca’s ability to breathe.
Which she forced herself to do calmly and with just as much effort when the shifter stepped past her to her orders to the other teams and Harkennr’s rescued victims.
The shooting pain of his absence, of their separation, felt like a blade slicing through her chest—an unbearable agony that lasted a fraction of a second and left her sucking in a sharp breath through her teeth before pulling herself back together.
She couldn’t afford to feel anything more than that. They had a warehouse to infiltrate, more civilians to liberate, and three competent, skilled, and far more resourced Shade teams to lead through the whole thing. The Roth-Da’al couldn’t afford any weakness tonight.
Rebecca couldn’t yet afford to admit that weakness might also have started to become a strength.
T he four Shade vehicles rerouted to this new last-minute breach op rolled to a stop on the wide gravel shoulder off the cracked, pothole-strewn side road leading straight ahead into the darkness.
In the distance, the bright floodlights mounted on the building’s external walls marked their target destination like a blinding bullseye in the night. Half a dozen streetlamps illuminated soft yellow pools scattered across the front lot.
From this distance, it was impossible to see anything else with the naked eye, but Rebecca and her teams now had updated weapon systems with advanced scopes to confirm every word from afar.
They also had Maddie, her knowledge of this previously unknown facility for storing newly acquired civilians just like them, plus five other kidnapping victims to corroborate every detail the witch shared with the Shade teams.
Six of thirty wasn’t much, but it was more than Rebecca and her teams would have had on their own. Their intel, if accurate, would be invaluable once the fighting started.
Rebecca could have picked apart every detail of what Maddie and the others described to her teams, but there just wasn’t time. Not only that, but she realized with a level of ironic wonder that she trusted them. Their information and instructions. Their willingness to fight against those who had abducted, held, and abused them before they ever even made it to Harkennr’s base.
That level of trust and belief was rare anywhere. It didn’t come from pity.
It came from Rebecca’s deeply personal familiarity with what it meant to be used, with no consideration for the individual behind their assigned worth. She knew what it meant to be able to act out against such a thing.
She’d never had the option of turning against the Bloodshadow Court in a physical way like this, but she was more than willing to facilitate it for Maddie and the others.
Plus, dealing Harkennr’s operation a massive underhanded blow without him expecting any of it had its own satisfaction. And tonight it was just the beginning.
After the rescued prisoners turned freedom fighters finished their description of the warehouse—including the surprisingly small but heavily armed force stationed there to secure the warehouse and keep the captured victims in line—Rebecca and Maxwell formed their plan of attack, though she deferred to him on most things.
It was hard enough to focus on covering as many last-minute details and contingencies as possible while battling the growing storm of rage inside her.
Harkennr’s operation extended much farther than she’d expected beyond the confines of the Old Joliet Prison. It didn’t surprise her that the warlock’s reach was long, even in Chicago. But it frustrated her that she hadn’t considered just how deeply he’d rooted himself already in her city before she’d had any idea he was here.
On top of all that, she had one other massive problem demanding her attention, and a private plan of her own to solidify and put into play before they moved on the warehouse.
New teams were assigned with slightly different changes, each of them with their own part to play in breaching the warehouse. The freed civilians were distributed evenly among those three teams, as well as armed with top-of-the-line magitek weaponry not yet available even on the black market, thanks to Shade. Then, it was finally time to move.
All three teams set out for the warehouse on foot, sticking to the shadows and staying off the road until they reached their target.
“Blackmoon,” Rebecca called out as the others fell in line and got moving.
Rowan fell back to join her, his eyes wide with curiosity and his ever-present grin lighting up his face.
“Please tell me you’re not sitting this one out,” he said, gesturing toward the teams ahead of them. “You’ll miss all the fun.”
“No, I’m going in. But I have a special mission just for you.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching, then chuckled, “And here I was, thinking this night couldn’t possibly get any more exciting. What do you need?”
She grabbed his hand and slapped a set of keys down into his open palm with a jingling clank. “It’s not confirmed, but there’s a very high chance this place has additional defenses all around the perimeter, including the back. We can’t break up our teams for a flanked assault from every direction. Not if we wanna hit them hard and fast.
“I want you to hold back until the front of the warehouse is breached. Once the fighting starts, you get behind the wheel and bring the fight to them right through the back door. They won’t expect it if we’ve already breached up front, but it’s a final surprise that could really turn things around for us.”
He scoffed. “You want me to drive one of your fancy new Shade cars?”
“Only after the fighting’s started. And take out as many of Harkennr’s forces from the back as you possibly can after that. Got it?”
“Crystal-clear instructions, Roth-Da’al,” he said with another chuckle. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the only one I trust to do as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time. And to do it right. You’re our special flank .”
Rowan cocked his head as he studied her face. He almost looked confused by the special assignment and its apparent secrecy—or suspicious of Rebecca’s motives for assigning it to him.
Then he barked out a laugh, tossed the keys in the air, and snatched them back out of it again with another jingle. “That’s the best idea you’ve had so far. I’m on it.”
“I knew you would be.” She bumped her shoulder against his as she walked past, making him laugh. Then she turned to call over her shoulder, “ After the fighting starts.”
“Oh, I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss this one for the world.”
She let herself smile back at him. “I know.”
Then she spun around again and hurried to catch up with her teams.
Maxwell stood off the road while the others continued on, watching Rebecca approach, his perpetual scowl darkening with her every step. “Something I should know about?”
Rebecca didn’t stop, forcing him to turn away from Rowan left behind with the vehicles so the shifter could walk at her side.
“I told Blackmoon to sit this one out,” she said, refusing to look at Maxwell because of how much it physically pained her to give him even this partially adulterated version of the truth. “I gave him a set of keys and told him to be ready as a getaway driver if necessary.”
“You think it’ll be necessary?” he asked.
“Honestly, no. But I don’t wanna give him the opportunity to screw anything up. It’s better to keep him out of the way this time, and there are still a lot of civilians in there. We both know he wouldn’t have just gone straight back to headquarters if I’d ordered it. I had to give him something .”
By the Blood, the lie set her throat on fire on its way out. She almost hadn’t managed to pull it off. It hurt so badly, almost as much as feeling distance between her and Maxwell. Now she’d finally tested her theory of how physically difficult it would be to lie to him.
But she’d done it.
She didn’t have any other choice.
If she’d told him the truth, he would have fought her every step of the way, and she couldn’t let that happen.
There was so much more riding on this breach op tonight, and even her Head of Security was aware she couldn’t let him jeopardize it all because of how deeply he mistrusted Rowan Blackmoon.
If everything went the way she expected it to, tonight’s final mission would bring down two birds with one stone.
A massive hit to Harkennr’s operation through his supply chain, and a way to finally get rid of Rowan for good.
Not once had Rowan gone with the program and done exactly as he was told. Tonight, for the first time, that would no longer be a liability.
Tonight, she was counting on it.