Chapter 64
The back door crashing open might have been meant to shock and awe, but as a combat-tested Marine, Connor Jameson knew how to hold his fire.
A dark shape filled the rear doorway and paused, only long enough to scan the room.
As he swept his muzzle across the kitchen, Connor held.
The attacker took two more steps inside, and as he did, a second silhouette appeared behind him in the doorway.
Connor continued to wait.
Then, when both men had committed, he opened fire.
The easiest shot would have been to take out the man already deeper in the kitchen. Connor, however, didn’t want to risk losing the second attacker in the doorway and so he shot him first.
His 1911 roared like thunder. Two rounds tore into the man at the door. Before either attacker could react, Connor shifted and followed up with another two rounds directed at the man already standing in the kitchen.
The man in the doorway slammed back against the frame and spun into the dark outside. The guy in the kitchen, bleeding from two shots to his chest, attempted to raise his suppressed weapon to fire back. Connor shot him again, this time right in the face, and he went down, dead.
Then the whole house erupted.
Bullets tore through the wall above the sink, showering the air with splinters and drywall dust. Apparently, the attacker who had tumbled backward outside was still alive.
As Connor swapped out his magazine and prepared to return fire, a boot hit the front door—heavy and loud. A second strike, louder and harder, followed immediately after and the lock assembly ripped loose, followed by the door flying inward.
The kicker came through with his carbine up, no stranger to making entries under hostile fire. Connor, however, shot first.
His 1911 bucked in his hands and the hallway flashed white. The round caught the man high in the shoulder, turning him just enough so that his teammate, stacked close behind him, had to pivot to the side.
Connor fired twice more, but both rounds went wide. Then it was their turn and the two attackers opened up.
As their suppressed weapons erupted, the teahouse came apart.
Rounds ripped through the sideboard and crashed through the Sheetrock behind him.
Knowing better than to stay in place, Connor dropped low and moved as fast as he could.
A fraction of a second later, rounds chewed up the spot he had just vacated.
He came up near the far end of the room and, taking aim at the man he had winged coming in the front door, fired again.
The attacker tried to drive deeper into the house anyway, but Connor’s second shot slammed right into his sternum, rupturing his heart and dropping him dead, half-in and half-out of the front door.
His partner stepped over his body and kept coming.
At the same time, fresh movement came from the kitchen. The wounded attacker who had been shooting through the back of the house had returned to the doorway.
Now, from the front entry and the rear, they had Connor bracketed. It wouldn’t take long to dial in their kill shot.
Connor dropped flat as both men opened up.
Rounds tore through the room from two directions. More wood splintered. More glass shattered. And the suspended fireplace rang incessantly as rounds ricocheted off its metal hood and flue.
The bullets were getting closer. Connor needed to disrupt their triangulation or he was done for.
Leaning his pistol out, he fired in the general direction of the front door, causing the attacker to retreat behind cover.
It was the only break Connor was going to get and he scrambled for the dining table. Now the wounded attacker at the back door would have to either hold his fire or risk hitting his partner.
What Connor hadn’t counted on, however, was that both men would press their luck—and that they would do it at precisely the same moment.
In unison, they came rushing into the room, training their fire on the dining room table. Connor had nowhere else to go.
The last thing that would go through his mind was his fear of what would happen to Erin and his guilt over having let her down.
Forever a Marine, he wasn’t about to surrender this fight.
If he was going down, he was taking at least one more of these guys with him.
As he was already angled toward the kitchen, the easiest would be the wounded attacker at the back door.
Bringing up his pistol as fast as he could, he pressed his trigger and fired.
At the same moment, he heard gunshots right behind him.
As the man at the back door fell dead, Connor spun, amazed that none of the bullets fired from the front door had struck him. He looked up just in time to see the other attacker jerk violently and collapse inside the threshold.
Standing over the body was a woman in tactical body armor emblazoned with three gold letters: FBI. She now had her weapon pointed at Connor.
“Special Agent Jennifer Fields!” she yelled. “Drop your weapon!”
Connor set the 1911 on the floor and raised his hands. “Don’t shoot,” he said.
“Any other hostiles in the house?”
“I counted four,” he said. “Two at the front. Two at the rear.”
Without lowering her weapon, Fields stepped past the body and began clearing the room.
All four attackers were dead. There were no signs of any others.
Holstering her weapon, she helped Connor up. “Shawna Vaughn sent me. Where’s Erin?”
Connor picked up his pistol and pointed toward the runner in the kitchen. “In the crawl space.”
Only then did he see the tablet. It lay shattered, its screen blown out. The camera feeds were gone.
As the steel was too hot to tuck the weapon back in his waistband, Connor set the 1911 on the counter. Then, dropping to one knee, he pulled the runner back, found the iron ring, and lifted the hatch.
“Erin,” he called down. “It’s me. You can come out.”
“Don’t.”
It was a man’s voice and had come from the edge of the kitchen.
With one hand holding up the hatch and the other extended into the darkness below, Connor froze. Fields spun so fast her jacket flared. But with her weapon holstered, she was half a second too late.
Olson stood in the doorway with his pistol leveled. His expression was flat and unreadable.
Shifting his muzzle toward Fields’s hip, he said, “Take it out slowly and put it on the floor.”
Fields held his gaze, then reached down, drew her weapon with two fingers, and lowered it carefully to the boards.
Olson flicked his eyes to the counter. “And the 1911.”
Connor straightened only enough to reach it and then set it on the floor next to Fields’s weapon.
“Kick them to me.”
Fields did what he asked.
“Now,” Olson said, gesturing to the crawl space, “get her out.”
Connor looked down into the darkness. “Erin, take my hand.”
She emerged dirty and shaken.
The moment she was clear of the opening, Olson motioned with his pistol toward the living area. “All of you,” he said. “Move.”
They did.
Like the kitchen, this room also looked like a tornado had raged through it. Shards of glass were everywhere. The front door hung open. The air was thick with smoke, drywall dust, and the smell of blood. Olson walked them backward until they were in front of the suspended fireplace.
“Kneel,” Olson ordered.
Connor felt Erin hesitate beside him. Then they all knelt.
Looking up at him, Connor said, “You should have sent more men.”
“I sent enough,” Olson replied. “Then Agent Fields arrived and complicated things.”
Fields kept her eyes on him. “Who do you work for?”
Olson ignored her. He was staring at Connor now. “Losing your job should have been enough. With your reputation damaged, you should have learned your lesson. But you kept digging.”
“At the think tank?” Connor asked.
Olson nodded. “You saw activity you weren’t meant to see. Just enough for you to become a problem.”
“And Erin?”
Olson’s expression never changed. “You brought her too close to things she was never supposed to see.”
“What about you?” Fields asked. “What’s your role?”
This time, Olson looked at her. “Finding talented people with debilitating weaknesses. Debt and ego. Resentment, fear, or ambition. We all have our pressure points. My strength lay in finding the ones who were the most useful.”
He shifted the pistol, settling it first on Connor and then on Fields.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “none of you are useful anymore. In fact, you’ve been quite a liability.”
Suddenly, three mysterious shots cracked from the entryway. The first two hit him in the head. The third tore through his throat, just below his Adam’s apple.
He was dead before he’d even hit the floor.
All eyes were drawn to Vaughn, who stood just inside the front door, her pistol gripped in her hands. She moved quickly, making sure the rooms were clear. “Is anyone else in the house?”
“Negative,” said Fields, who was already on her feet.
Rushing to Olson, the FBI agent kicked his pistol away and checked for a pulse, just to make sure. Nothing. “He’s dead,” she said, walking over to retrieve her own weapon.
Connor rose next and helped Erin to her feet. “Are you hurt?” he asked, checking her over.
She shook her head. “I’m okay.”
When Vaughn returned to the living room, her gaze went from Olson’s body to the four dead gunmen and then back to Connor. “I leave you alone for five minutes…”
Connor couldn’t help a small grin. “It was a little longer than five.”
Fields wasn’t smiling. Until she got them all back to the FBI building, she wouldn’t feel truly safe. “We need to move,” she said. “Right now. I don’t want to wait around for any more surprises.”
Connor picked up his 1911, inserted a fresh magazine, and, with the steel having cooled, tucked the weapon into his waistband. Killing Olson had solved only one problem. Until someone got to the bottom of why he had been targeted, neither he nor Erin would ever be safe.