Chapter 20 Doc
DOC
“Why the fuck did none of Range’s damn shit go off?”
Brutus’s question only made the answer sour in my mouth. “Because they’re outside of the perimeter, shooting over the gate.”
He grabbed my arm and yanked me further down the hallway. “Fuckin’ hell, that means they’re casing us.”
“We need darkness,” I said as I yanked out of his grasp and fell in step beside him.
It felt weird, not hearing the girls panicking.
“That means we need night vision goggles,” Brutus said.
I took a hard left. “Good thinking.”
Thuh-thunk.
Thuh-thunk.
Thuh-thunk.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins as we wrapped our way back around to the armory we just left. It was much closer to the panic room than I wanted it to be, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I hadn’t had a chance to completely rearrange this place the way I wanted it.
But moving through the house and listening to how the bullets changed gave away a fuckton.
“Brutus,” I said as we approached the armory.
He reached for the doorknob and shouldered in. “What?”
“The bullets are following us.”
I’d never seen Brutus freeze that way before he turned to face me. “I did keep hearing them while we were moving.”
I nodded. “They’re casing us, even now.”
Brutus snarled. “Thermal imaging.”
Thuh-thunk.
Thuh-thunk.
The most rhythmic death drum on the planet. “Do you know how we combat heat sensors like that?”
His grin was slow. “Darkness?”
I pointed to the wall. “And mylar blankets. See those foil squares? Grab three of them for each of us.”
Brutus wrinkled his nose as he scooped a few out of the literal glass jar I had mounted on the wall. “These little things are blankets?”
“Thermal mylar blankets,” I said as I took three of them and shoved them into my pockets. “Goggles?”
“Where the hell do ya keep ‘em, Doc?”
I spotted them up in the corner and pointed. “There. Grab two of them.”
Brutus walked over and plucked it down like it was nothing. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
Thuh-thunk.
Thuh-thunk.
My gaze flickered over to Brutus. “Basement. Not the panic room.”
I stared him down, hoping he read between the lines.
He saddled the night vision goggles on his head before taking one last look at the pitiful foil squares in his palm.
He stuffed them into his pants pocket, then flipped the goggles down.
Except, he didn’t turn on the night vision portion or anything.
And at the angle he stood, his overblown eyes blinked like something out of an eighties sci-fi horror film.
I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Brutus scoffed as he flipped the goggles back up onto his head. “Laughing? At a time like this?”
“Come on, big guy,” I said with a snicker as I slipped my own night vision goggles on.
And then, the journey to the basement started.
Weirdly enough, the thunking of the bullets stopped.
I yanked out my cell phone to check every single camera that Ranger had set up not only along the perimeter, but along the house.
I searched for glares, shadows, movement.
Anything I could see that may give me an inkling of an idea as to how many people had this fucking place surrounded.
There was nothing, though.
“Maybe they just don’t have an angle on us,” I muttered as I reached for the basement door.
“What was that, Doc?” Brutus asked.
I didn’t make it a habit of not answering my brother’s questions.
But at that moment, I ignored all questions and pretense as I eased the basement door open and held my scoped pistol out in front of me.
“Stay close,” I whispered.
My training came screeching back in a hurry.
My footsteps, silenced. My body, pivoting to clear corners.
Taking the harsh ninety-degree landing left me with practical motion sickness with how quickly I turned to scan my eyes over the basement.
Brutus hovered over me from behind, his gun pointed over my shoulder, ready to steady himself should he have to.
He’d blow out my fucking ear drum.
But we’d be alive.
It was so eerily quiet that I heard my own breathing. Even with the silencing tactics, I picked up on its smallest little vibrations and hitches. At some point in time, Brutus placed his hand on my shoulder. A move my men utilized a lot, especially in bloody battlefields.
We placed a hand on someone’s shoulder when we needed more guidance than we could give ourselves.
When I arrived at the circuit breaker—well, the circuit breaker I needed, anyway—I turned and looked at Brutus. His lips puckered into one of his infamous, ‘oh, that’s what you meant,’ looks.
I just shook my head as I pressed the button that swung open the breaker door.
My fingers drifted across the words, double-checking the almost-never-wrong vaults of my mind.
And when I scanned across the label for the panic room, I moved over to the right.
I opened my hand and pressed against all of the switches at once, hearing the bulk of the house’s main power supply power down.
The generators geared up just on time, but I was right there with the code to input into the wall to shut them off.
I heard those power down as well before I flipped the rest of the breakers around the panic room off.
I reached for my night vision goggles and slid them down over my face.
“First move?” Brutus muttered.
I patted myself down, making sure the rest of my weapons were where I needed them. “The safe.”
“What?”
I looked around the basement before I pointed to the far-right corner. “I need the safe.”
“What safe?” he asked, following after me.
“Sh.”
His growl told me that I was treading on thin ice, but to be honest, we all were. Brutus and I were painfully outnumbered, and even with the help of some of the more capable girls in the crowd, we were still sorely outpaced.
I quickly turned the knob of the safe around and around until I felt the latch pop.
“Old school,” Brutus said as he stood behind me. “What warrants the old school?”
“This,” I said as I held up a control with a red button.
“Doc?”
I handed it to Brutus. “This is yours to take until we’re done.”
He held his hand away from me. “The fuck is that a detonator for?”
I forgot sometimes that Brutus was a demolitions nut. We just never required his expertise much. “My house.”
“You have your fucking house rigged to blow? The one we’ve been staying in?”
I took his hand and placed the detonator in his hand. “It doesn’t detonate unless you arm it. Click it three times to—”
“I’m now blowing your fucking home sky-high. Does Cap know this? Did he sign off on—?”
“Brutus, those bullets are following us because we’ve got more than a handful of people outside.”
That stopped him for a moment, but only for a moment. “Cap and them will be here soon. We just have to stall.”
“And if we can’t?”
“And if we can’t, we blow ourselves up?”
I groaned as my head fell back. “Brutus, if we can’t take them on, we lure them in and trap them.”
He stared at me through the binoculars before looking down at the detonator. And then, with a wide grin on his face, he slid it into his pocket.
“Click it three times, got it.”
I tilted my head. “I don’t like how gleeful you look at the idea of blowing up my home.”
If I could’ve seen his eyes, I’m sure they would have gleamed. “You just lead the way and leave that to me.”
“I’ve created a monster,” I muttered as I took my leave toward the stairs.
Brutus simply chuckled behind before we ascended back up to the main floor of the house.
“Case first, pulp second,” Brutus whispered.
I nodded. “Stick together. East or west?”
Brutus nodded to the right. “West.”
I followed behind him that time. ‘Case first, pulp second’ was the crew’s way of saying, ‘we case the outer perimeter first, and then we tackle the inside.’ But we had no idea how long we were surveilled, and we had no idea if they heard us.
So the more ‘brother speak’ we could use, the better.
“Do these windows bust from the inside?” Brutus asked.
“Bulletproof windows, because of how they are fused together, are more vulnerable to attacks from the inside, yes. Why do you—?”
POW! POW! POW!
I whipped around and leveled my gun before I had a chance to ask what in the hell happened. I heard the first and second bullets, followed by the sound of heavily-shattered glass. And then, another bullet.
I heard something thud.
Brutus grabbed me and slammed me against the wall before a bullet flew through the window he just busted out. I saw the man’s head on a swivel, trying to locate where the son of a bitch was.
“Gotcha,” I whispered as I clocked the fucker in between some trees about sixty feet out.
My pistol was up in my field of vision within milliseconds.
Through the scope, I caught that bastard right between his fucking eyes. But we had an issue.
We had a vulnerability in the house now.
“Down,” I hissed as I yanked at Brutus and pulled him to the floor.
I motioned for him to stay down as a radio came alive from somewhere outside.
“Alpha One to Beta one, do you copy?”
Silence.
“Alpha One, this is Beta one. Do you copy?”
More silence.
“Goddamn it. Alpha One to Beta One, I will not ask again. Pick up your fucking radio.”
“Please, please, please, please, please,” I whispered to myself.
“The fuck you prayin’ for, Doc?” Brutus whispered.
Please, dear God, I just needed the man over the radio to send those bastards—
“Alpha One to Team One! Your Beta is down! I repeat, your Beta is down!”
Another voice. “Canary isn’t responding, either.”
Yet another voice. “Should we go check on them?”
Alpha One’s voice was music to my ears. “Delta. Enigma. Go find them. Leave that front door to me.”
“Yesssss,” I hissed to myself as I dropped to the floor and rolled over the shattered glass to the other side.
I propped myself against the wall as I looked over at Brutus. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
He grinned and pulled out one of those foil packets. “Body condom time?”
I had to suppress the urge to laugh. Because, well, outside, you know? “Body condom time.”
We found ourselves in a rare opportunity to become predators once more.
I ripped open one of the foil packets with my teeth and unveiled the massive mylar blanket.
I wrapped it around my shoulders and tucked it over my head and feet.
I saw Brutus staring at me with equal parts forced nonchalance and curiosity.
But eventually, the two of us were covered.
“Fuckin’ hell, this thing is hot,” Brutus whispered.
My ears twitched as a twig snapped. I brought my finger to my lips.
Brutus simply nodded.
We had no idea how long it would be until Cap got here with the rest of the guys.
We had no idea if King was coming in their place with some men.
All we knew was that we had a room full of panicked women upstairs, and Brutus and I were the only two standing in between them and that fucking sex trafficking ring.
Not on my goddamn watch.
Another crunch of a twig made my ear twitch, and I slowly turned my head. Brutus slumped his shoulders, seemingly disappointed that the first of the unlucky bastards was headed into my line of sight instead of his.
Poor guy.
Not getting to kill when he wants.
I saw the man looking into something on his wrist. Oh yeah. They had thermal imaging all right. I just stared at the man, hunkered down beneath the windowsill, but angled in such a way that as he progressed further into the window’s picture, more of his head became available as a target to me.
I slowly moved my pistol into place.
I watched Brutus draw in a breath to hold just as I did mine.
And when the two of us exhaled, I pulled the trigger.
I watched as the man dropped to the ground before he ever knew what hit him.
“Oh hell yeah,” Brutus muttered.
I didn’t like that the front door was unattended.
But what I didn’t like even more was the fact that the window was blown wide open to the inside of the house.
Not that we were close to the stairwell or anything.
But I had to assume that if they were casing us for routines, that they most likely pulled schematics of the house.
Which meant we had to play this smart.