CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Talia had thought her heart was going to jump out of her chest at the sight of Keller’s men moving back and forth past the server room where Lennox and Colt had been hiding. But her definition of fear was completely redefined when she stared at the video monitors and saw them running out of the building at a sprint. She wasn’t sure what scared her more. That Lennox and Colt were running into danger, or that she, Katrina, and Kyla were the ones they were risking themselves to save.
“I don’t understand why we can’t get the hell out of here?” Katrina whispered, like she thought someone would hear if she spoke too loud.
“Because of them,” Kyla whispered just as softy from where she knelt behind the driver’s seat peeking out the front windshield of the vehicle.
Talia crawled forward across the back of the van with Katrina even as Kyla motioned for them to stay low. Talia understood why when they reached the front seats and peeked over the dash to see the dark SUV slowly creeping down the street toward them. There were four people in the vehicle, checking each car parked on the street like they expected to find someone sitting inside one of them.
“There’s another one coming from behind us. They must have a good idea there was someone running surveillance from this general area,” Kyla whispered, motioning with her head toward the driver’s side mirror.
Talia glanced over and saw two headlights slowly approaching. Her stomach clenched up all over again and her legs started to tingle like they wanted to run away, whether the rest of her body came with them or not.
“What are we going to do?” Katrina asked softly.
Panic no longer filled her friend’s voice. Instead, it seemed like she’d settled down into something almost approaching calm. Talia could only envy her.
“We hang out here and wait for Wes, Lennox and the other guys to arrive and save our butts,” Kyla said, in a tone even calmer than Katrina.
“But the office building is blocks away,” Katrina said. “They’re never going to get here in time to help us.”
“Navy SEALs can run a lot faster than you’d think,” Kyla told them as the vehicle in front of them crept closer. “They’ll get here.”
The SUV approaching from the front was probably about fifty feet away and closing in way faster than it should have been. They probably had ten or fifteen seconds before it reached them. What was the possibility that they’d drive past a van with dark tinted windows when they almost certainly knew they were in the right area already?
Talia didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she started getting dizzy. By then the SUV in front of them was so close she could hear the men inside talking in sharp, urgent tones.
“We’re right on top of them,” one of them said.
“Get down!” Kyla whisper-shouted, throwing herself at Talia and Katrina a fraction of a second before chunks of metal, glass, and plastic video monitors and electronics exploded around them.
Talia lay on the carpeted floor, hands over her head, screaming her head off and trying to understand what was happening. It seemed to take forever for her to realize the men in the SUV were shooting at the van with what must be silenced weapons. Not that their silencers helped. It still sounded like they were trapped inside a drum.
Just when Talia thought there was no way they’d get out of this alive, the van stopped being shredded. Instead, one racket was replaced with another as loud gunfire sounded from the other side of the van. Lennox and the other guys must have arrived. And they were shooting at the bad guys.
She screamed all over again when the side door of the van, the one closest to the curb, was suddenly jerked open, metal screeching on metal and pieces of glass falling everywhere.
Talia would have run, but there was nowhere to go. So, her fight-or-flight instinct defaulted to the first option and she prepared to throw herself at her attackers.
Then she saw Lennox standing there in the open door of the van and her heart started functioning again. Talia still threw herself forward but for a completely different reason now.
Lennox caught her up in his arms but instead of helping her out of the van, he picked her up and shoved her right back in. “Stay here. The other guys will give us cover while I get the three of you the hell out of here.”
Talia wanted to point out that leaving their swiss-cheese van was probably a good first step to getting of there, but Lennox was already behind the wheel and cranking the engine, eyes fixed on the scene outside the fragmented front windshield.
“I thought they’d find us if we turned on the lights,” Katrina said from her huddled position on the floor.
“Don’t worry about that,” Lennox said, raising his voice to be heard over all the gunfire around them. “I’m pretty sure they already know we’re here.”
Then Lennox hit the gas and Talia fell on her butt as he shoved their way past the SUV that had been trying to block their path. Seconds later, bullets hit the back of the van.
“Should I close the door?” Talia shouted, looking out the van’s side door at the parked cars along the sidewalk starting to blur as they began to build up speed.
“Not yet!” he shouted back, his focus fixed on the SUV behind them even as he shouted something in his radio about “catching up.”
Talia was about to ask what in the world that meant when a blur of movement outside the open door caught her attention. A split second later, a man came flying through it. She barely rolled out of the way as he landed right where she’d been, coming to a halt perched half atop Katrina. She let out a startled scream.
“Sorry I’m late,” Darwin yelled as he crawled off Katrina, making his way to the back doors of the van even as more bullets slammed into it. “I got a little hung up trying to get these people off your tail.”
Talia stared wide-eyed as Darwin kicked open the back doors and started shooting at the SUV behind them and closing in quick. The thought that they were racing down the streets of San Diego while being shot at struck her as positively unreal. But this was definitely happening.
“Hold on and keep your heads down! Left turn coming!” Lennox shouted from the driver’s seat just as he turned the van so sharply that Talia was almost pitched out the open side door.
“Might be a good time to close that door now,” he called out helpfully, throwing a casual glance at her over his shoulder like this was another ride at Legoland. If Talia ever wanted enough confirmation that Lennox and the other SEALs lived in a different world when it came to their perception of danger, this was it.
Kyla crawled over to help Talia slide the door closed, the two of them holding onto each other so they wouldn’t fall out the opening. The mere thought made Talia’s stomach heave.
“This is crazy,” she muttered, gasping in relief as the two of them finally got the door closed. “I’m not made for this kind of stuff.”
“Not many people are,” Kyla said. “Which is why we should be thankful for SEALs like Wes, Lennox, and the other guys.”
Talia opened her mouth to reply but the van suddenly jerked to the right and then slammed into something hard. The crash was a loud mix of crunching metal and breaking glass, sending her and everyone else in the back sliding across the debris littered floor to bounce off the back of the front seats.
Before she could figure out which way was up, Lennox was out of the vehicle and shooting at someone in front of them. At the same time, Darwin jumped out the back, firing several times at the SUV behind them before reaching into the van to grab the first person he could reach—Katrina.
“Everyone out of the van. Kyla, grab the hard drives!” Darwin shouted before he and Katrina disappeared into the night.
Talia would have freaked out if her body could have handled any more stimuli. As it was, she simply crawled toward the side door.
She couldn’t contain the scream that slipped out when the side door was suddenly jerked out of her hand, sliding back with a bang. She bit her tongue when she realized it was Lennox. He reached for her with one hand while holding his big scary rifle up with the other.
“Come on. The van is trashed,” he said, helping Talia out of the vehicle as they waited for Kyla, who was poking around inside the back somewhere. “Kirk and Wes will pick us up, but we need to get out of here before anyone else sees us.”
“Where are Colt and Simon?” Kyla asked as she clambered out of the van, a canvas messenger bag over her shoulder, probably holding the hard drives Darwin had mentioned.
As if in response, gunfire erupted from several blocks away, prompting a chuckle from Lennox. “They’re giving us time to get clear, so let’s not waste it.”
Talia was terrified of leaving the relative safety of the van but didn’t have a choice as Lennox tugged her hand. She glanced over her shoulder to see smoke roiling out from under the hood of the vehicle, a few flames visible through the heavily damaged grill.
The SUV that’d been chasing them was turned crossway in the street with the entire driver’s side smashed in and all the windows blown out. There were four people inside. None of them were moving.
Fortunately, Lennox distracted her from the scene by tossing something through the open door of the van then urging her and Kyla toward the nearest alley. Before she could ask what he’d thrown into the vehicle, there was a soft pop behind them followed by the crackle of fire. Talia looked back to see flames filling the back of the van. A part of her mind wondered if Kyla would get in trouble for not bringing the van back but then another thought occurred to her, one much more important.
“Where’s Katrina?” Talia yelled, looking around the dark alley in panic when she didn’t see her friend or Darwin anywhere. It had only been a few seconds since they’d slipped out the back of the van ahead of them.
“They’re heading to the extraction point by a slightly different route,” Lennox called out in a soft voice, letting go of her hand but motioning for her stay close. “Don’t worry, we’ll catch up to them soon enough.”
Of course, Talia worried anyway. But then she had to focus all her attention on keeping up, staying close to Lennox and Kyla as the alleys seemed to get darker and darker. It didn’t help that Lennox kept making what seemed to be random turns whenever he felt like it, reminding her of the night Keller had chased her near Anna’s apartment complex. The similarities almost caused her knees to give out.
As harrowing as running through the dark alleys was, it was when Lennox pulled them to a stop that was even more terrifying. The first time they knelt against a brick wall while he stared off into the darkness and Talia had no idea what was happening. The second time, when bullets clattered against the asphalt a couple feet away, she froze solid, vaguely aware that he was shooting at someone out there in the darkness—maybe several someones.
Talia would still be in the alley, too scared to move, if it hadn’t been for Lennox. Once the shooting stopped, he’d gotten her up and moving, practically carrying her as they continued fleeing through the darkness toward some destination unknown to her.
As for Kyla, she was handling this whole situation much better than she was. Part of her wanted to feel badly about that but in the end, she decided she simply wasn’t built for this kind of thing. Thankfully, Lennox was. He led them along like they were on a shopping trip through the mall. It was almost jarring to see how calmly he was behaving.
A little while later, Lennox brought the three of them out onto a larger street. A few seconds after that, Darwin and Katrina were with them. She looked as rattled as Talia felt. Before she could ask if her friend was all right, two minivans slid to a stop on the street beside them.
Talia was so beyond shook up by this point that she couldn’t even manage a scream. Instead, she stood there as the side doors of the vehicles slid open to reveal Wes, Colt, and the other SEALs. Apparently, this is what an extraction looked like.
Thank goodness. Because her heart couldn’t take any more adrenaline.