Chapter 13 #2
She crouches behind a parked car, out of sight but close enough to hear Alexi address the men.
She scowls when she sees several men from the Irish organization leaning casually against a car.
She hasn’t met them yet, but if she had to guess based on Phoenix’s and Hadley’s descriptions, that must be Liam and Brian, the leader of the Irish Mafia and his second-in-command.
Her attention pivots back to Alexi as he gives his men instructions.
“You’ve been divided into four teams,” he tells them.
“Two teams of six and two teams of five. Tonight’s challenge is designed to see how well you can strategize and work in a unit.
” He holds up several pieces of colorful fabric, then hands one out to each team.
“Each team gets a flag. The team that secures and brings me all four flags wins. You have two hours… Go.”
All four teams hustle off into the darkness, each heading in a different direction.
Indecision flickers through Ulayna for a moment before she hurries after one of the teams of five.
She can’t follow all of them as they split up, so she figures it might be easier to start with a team of five instead of a team of six.
The men jog through the darkness, clearly trying to put some distance between them and the other teams. Their voices are a low rumble as they strategize and plan while they run. Thankfully, Ulayna has no difficulty keeping up. All her training is really paying off.
She follows them at a discreet distance until they slow, then stop. Crouching behind an abandoned car, she watches as they pry up a section of cracked sidewalk.
Ulayna’s heart rate picks up when she sees one of the men pull out a green scrap of fabric.
He glances around furtively, then stuffs it into the hole.
The team quickly lowers the heavy concrete piece back down, rearranging it until it blends seamlessly with the other cracked sidewalk pieces around it.
Satisfied, the men brush their hands off and head into the darkness, searching for the other teams.
Ulayna waits several minutes to ensure they’re gone before rising from her hiding spot. Quietly, she walks over to where she saw them hide their flag. Luck must be on her side tonight, because if she hadn't watched them bury it, she never would have been able to find it.
She bends down to the slab of concrete and grips the edge. Even with her gloves on, the raw edges bite into her hands. She puts all of her strength into it, but can’t move it more than an inch.
Use your environment. She can practically hear Bill’s voice in her head, reminding her to look for advantages around her.
For the past month, they’ve reminded her time and time again that she will almost always be smaller than her opponents.
She has to learn to compensate for that or, better yet, leverage it as an asset.
She quickly scans around her for something she can use to move the heavy concrete. Spotting a long piece of scrap metal, she brings it over and wedges it in the crack. She shoves a smaller piece of rubble next to it to use as a leverage point.
Once everything is in place, she pulls down on the far end of the scrap metal.
The concrete slab shifts a few inches, and she exalts in the small victory.
Repositioning the metal bar and her fulcrum, she tries again.
This time, she puts all of her weight onto the bar, hoping it doesn’t snap.
With an angry groan, the concrete slab tips up and finally slides away.
The bar falls out from beneath her with a clatter. As the noise rings out through the still night, she stiffens. Shit. She doesn’t want to give away her location.
Hurriedly, she stuffs her hand in the hole beneath the concrete and snags the small scrap of green fabric. Yes! One down, only three more to go!
She folds the fabric into a small square and stuffs it into her bra for safekeeping. After glancing around her to check for threats, she quickly retreats into the darkness of the nearby building.
Patiently, she waits five minutes, then ten. Once she’s sure that no one is coming to investigate the noise she made, she leaves the building and heads deeper into the warehouse district.
All she has to do now is find the other teams, somehow steal their flags without being seen, and make it back to Alexi without getting caught. Her grin is slightly manic. Easy peasy.
Several minutes later, she finds a building with a fire escape that reaches the roof. It looks rickety and marginally unsafe, but she decides it’s worth the risk to get a better vantage point and see the area’s layout more clearly.
She hoists herself up onto a dumpster a few feet away from the bottom of the fire escape ladder, then jumps, launching herself at the lowest rung. Her hands connect with a slap.
Carefully, she swings her body side to side until she’s able to get a little momentum. On a sharp exhale, she uses the motion to reach up and to the side for the next rung of the ladder. She repeats the move once more until she’s high enough to hook a foot onto the lowest rung.
Grunting with the effort, she manages to get both feet under her and climb up to the first landing. She breathes a slight sigh of relief before continuing up another level.
The fire escape groans occasionally, and sections of the railing are missing in places, but thankfully, it holds. Finally, she reaches the top.
Cautiously, she peers over the concrete lip of the building and checks for anyone else around. Seeing no one, she pushes herself up and over the ledge to land softly on the roof.
Staying low so her silhouette isn’t outlined in the soft moonlight behind her, she moves along the edge of the building. In the distance, she can see sporadic security lights flickering at the entrances to abandoned buildings that rise out of the darkness like the skeletons of ancient monsters.
Just like Shade taught her, she catalogs everything. Routes between the buildings, where the pockets of darkness are, which buildings have balconies or fire escapes, all of it.
She glances at her watch. It’s been half an hour, so a quarter of her time has passed. She needs to locate the other teams quickly if she’s going to meet the two-hour deadline Alexi set.
Finding a good vantage point, she hunkers down to watch. After just a few minutes, she spots a team of five men slowly coming her direction. She ducks down so they can’t spot her. She’ll wait a few minutes and check again to see which way they go.
With adrenaline coursing through her, she forces herself to slow her breathing and focus. Closing her eyes, she listens for the scuff of a boot on concrete or the murmur of voices. She waits for them to walk past her building… but they don’t.
She holds her breath as she hears the faint scrape of a door opening and the quiet tread of boots on stairs.
Fuck! They’re coming up. Of all the buildings to choose from, why’d they have to pick the one she’s on?
But she knows. They’re coming up here for the same reason she did—to get to higher ground for a better vantage point.
Unfortunately, her options are now limited.
She can’t take the fire escape back down.
It will take too long, and even if she manages it without making noise, she’ll be completely exposed the entire time.
It’s not worth the risk. And she obviously can’t go down the access stairs that they’re coming up.
She’ll just have to hide and hope they leave quickly.
She looks around frantically. She has only a few seconds to find a hiding place on the empty roof of an industrial building.
She notices a pile of old, broken-down wooden crates leaning against the access doorway.
She races toward them and ferrets through the debris until she finds a few tapered shards of wood.
She shoves them in the doorjamb at the bottom of the door and kicks them, wedging them in.
It won’t keep the men out, but hopefully that will buy her a few extra seconds.
As the soft sound of their footsteps reaches the doorway, she backs away as quietly as she can. The handle on the door turns, and the door is pushed open a fraction of an inch.
She spins on her heel and darts around the exposed heating and cooling units mounted to the roof, looking for anywhere to hide. Just as she spots an opening in an air ventilation shaft, she hears the hard thud of a shoulder smashing against the door.
She climbs inside, wedging herself into the tight space and getting as comfortable as possible.
Thud. The door flies open, and the five men spill out onto the rooftop.
From her location, she can just barely see them spreading out to check the roof for threats. She slinks back into her hiding space another inch and holds her breath.
After a few seconds, they appear satisfied that the roof is empty. She breathes a sigh of relief.
“This is a good location,” one of the men says quietly.
The others nod their agreement. “Okay, you two stay here and guard the flag. The rest of us will track down that other team we saw and try to find the location of their flag.”
Yes! Ulayna watches one of the men pull a small piece of yellow fabric from his pocket and hand it to one of his comrades. Three of the men head back the way they came, closing the door behind them, and the other two stay on the rooftop with the flag.
Ulayna debates whether or not to attack the two men. She’d have the element of surprise on her side, but with no weapons, she’s not sure she could win in hand-to-hand combat against two men at the same time. No, she’ll have to be patient and wait for a distraction or a window of opportunity.
The minutes drag by. She glances at her watch again. Shit. There’s only an hour left! If she doesn’t make a move soon, she’ll never win this challenge.
She’s struggling not to fidget, fighting her instinct to get moving, when one of the men stands.
“I gotta piss,” he grunts and walks to the far side of the building.