Chapter 69 Poe
POE
Getting through the guards was easier than I’d expected. Jude called the guys “amateurs with guns” with a derisive snort, and we’d taken out the four that had been posted on one side of the main house right after we heard gunfire from the direction of the guest houses.
That would have been Bram and Remy.
I knew because that had been the plan, and we’d been warned by Rafe, Nolan, and Jude more than once to stick to the plan.
Jude had alluded to the fact that they weren’t using comms because of us, because we were also “amateurs with guns” and we’d make too much noise and muddy up the streamlined communication he, Rafe, and Nolan had been trained to use in the military.
He wasn’t a dick about it. It just was what it was and I guessed when you were trained to kill by the military industrial complex even we would seem like amateurs.
Once the guards were down, I followed Jude through a glass door at the back of the house.
If I’d been alone — or with Bram and Remy — I would have broken it and kept moving, but Jude removed a small tool from his bag of tricks and cut a hole into the glass, popped the piece out, and let it fall silently into his hand.
He pocketed the piece of glass and slipped his hand through the door to unlock it.
The alarm blared when he opened the door.
“First ones in, he said with a note of pride.
He hurried to punch in the code. I had no idea how they’d gotten it because when we’d asked they’d told us “don’t worry about it,” but the alarm went quiet and we moved forward.
We didn’t stop when gunfire sounded from the front of the house. We just moved through its huge, minimalistic rooms until we ran into Rafe and Nolan in the main hall leading to the front of the house.
“First floor’s clear,” Rafe said to Jude. “We’ll take the second floor while you hit the tunnel.”
It had all been planned. Bram was determined that we would be the ones to take out Ethan for Maeve.
And Maeve had been right: Dimitri Kaprolov had built a tunnel under the house.
It had clearly been built as an escape tunnel, one long run from the house to the road, and it wasn’t a stretch to think its existence was one of the reasons Ethan Todd had purchased the house from his old mentor.
Both men were sick fucks who might be raided by the Feds at any minute. They’d be stupid sick fucks not to plan for an escape, and they hadn’t gotten away with their crimes for as long as they had by being stupid.
Rafe and Nolan disappeared into another hall that led to the stairs. We’d all studied the house’s floor plan: we knew which rooms where which and we knew the entrance to the tunnel was in the room that had been marked Den on the original blueprints.
Jude and I had rounded the corner into the hall leading to the room when we spotted a guy in jeans and a black hoodie disappearing into it.
“There he is,” I said, rushing forward.
He shut and locked the door behind him.
I took a couple steps back and delivered three kicks to it before it finally gave way. We were past the need to be quiet.
Todd knew we were here.
Jude and I stepped through the splintered door and immediately spotted the open bookshelf panel. It was just like the one at Aventine, and I felt the cold air moving into the room from the underground tunnel before I was even halfway across the room.
I hit the stairs leading below ground at a sprint, determined not to let Todd get away.
Jude was right behind me and I leapt off the stairs before I’d reached the bottom and vaulted after the figure quickly disappearing into the shadows of the tunnel.
Emergency lights — the kind that came on in a power outage — shone from the concrete walls of the tunnel, but they were dim and spread far apart.
It didn’t matter. I was used to hunting in the shadows, and I ran full speed, Todd’s footsteps mingling with mine and Jude’s as we gained on him.
It took less than a minute to get close enough to take him down.
I reached for his shoulders and missed, snagging his sweatshirt instead.
It was enough. He went down, face first, onto the concrete floor.
Somewhere behind us, I was aware of more footsteps in the tunnel but I knew Jude had my back.
I leapt onto Todd and lifted his head, then smashed his face into the concrete floor before turning him over. Blood poured from his forehead and nose, his eyes wide with fear.
But something wasn’t right.
I pulled the hood off Todd’s head as Bram and Remy pulled up next to Jude “Fuck!”
“What?” Remy asked behind me.
“It’s not him. It’s not Todd.”