13. Chapter 13
13
“ R ight there at the end.” It wasn’t necessary, but Rebecca pointed anyway. “That’s his spot.”
Maxwell slammed on the brakes a dozen yards from the bungalow house at the end of the street, jerking everyone else violently forward against their seatbelts before snarling, “I know where he lives.”
“Oh, so you stalk all our new business contacts, too?” she snapped.
With another low, warning growl, the shifter slowly turned his head to meet her gaze and said nothing.
In the back seat, Lerrick pressed a fist to his mouth and whispered, “Damn…”
“Let’s go.” Rebecca leapt out of the car, augmented assault rifle in hand, and slammed the door shut before anyone else had opened theirs.
If Maxwell couldn’t keep his attitude under control, given the stressful circumstances, fine. She could play that game.
She’d been playing it for months now.
In under a minute, the small team converged to approach the house together, where they hoped to find one Bruce Urholder still alive and kicking.
The house was completely dark, with no visible lights through the windows. Not even an exterior light over the garage or the front porch to signify anyone was home.
That darkness sprouted a pit of apprehension in Rebecca’s gut, but she wrote it off as nerves and hypervigilance.
A dark house after sundown didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Or it meant Shade’s newest unknown enemy had gotten here first and they were already too late.
“The guy lives here?” Lerrick asked as Rebecca led them up the creaking porch steps towards the front door.
“Runs the shop right out of his house,” Tig whispered in reply. “Brilliant business model, if you ask me. Living and working in the same place.”
“That’s literally what we do.”
“Exactly.”
Rebecca ignored the banter, though she did wonder why Maxwell had selected these two tonight when he had to have known this was how they worked together.
Then again, they’d set out from Headquarters for an intel-only operation, which had now turned into a potential full-scale rescue and extraction.
Fingers crossed.
She rang the doorbell first, which elicited a chime inside that died into a crow-like squawk at the end.
Behind her, Lerrick snorted.
Rebecca rang twice more, then knocked on the door and waited.
Nothing.
“See anything?” she whispered.
Maxwell pulled his face away from the front window off the porch and turned toward her, shaking his head.
Normally, an unanswered knock on the door was reason enough to turn around and try again later, but tonight was actually life or death. Hopefully, Bruce Urholder still had the privilege of that being an option.
“Just one more time,” Rebecca murmured, then pounded the heel of her fist three times against the door, hard enough to rattle the doorknob and all the front windows in their frames.
But still nothing.
She tested the doorknob just in case, but it was locked. Figured.
“Prepare to breach,” Maxwell grumbled as he rejoined the team’s formation in front of the door.
“On three,” Rebecca said. She lifted her rifle and aimed squarely at the doorknob. “One… Two…”
A blindingly bright light burst on directly overhead. The team ducked and pulled away from the sudden blaze, shielding their eyes.
Maxwell snarled and cast quick disapproving glances at the porch’s overhanging awning. “Who puts emergency floodlights on their house ?”
“Someone who understands emergencies,” Rebecca gritted out, then redoubled her grip on her rifle. “Eyes on the door.”
Her laughably small team had enough time to recover their dazzled wits, ready a new aim, and prepare for any potential danger beyond this door, but that was it.
A strobing flash of yellow-gold light ignited around the door’s frame before the doorknob turned sharply and the door swung open into the house.
“Don’t move!” Tig shouted. “Hands where we can see them!”
“ What ? What the fuck’s going on out here? Hello?”
The gruff, oddly nasal voice seemed to come from nowhere at first, then Rebecca glanced down to find the shortest gnome she’d ever seen standing there with one hand still gripping a thick black rope attached to something above him. He blinked furiously and squinted against the disarmingly bright glow on his porch. “It’s the middle of the night! What do you want?”
“Shit, that’s him.” Lerrick lowered his weapon and pointed at the gnome. “That’s the guy the witch sisters brought our way. The tech guy. He’s still alive.”
“Well I don’t expect to wake up dead in the middle of the night!” the gnome barked. “And I don’t do business after—”
“Bruce Urholder?” Rebecca asked.
He squinted dubiously up at her and scoffed. “ Duh . Who the hell are—”
“Get inside,” Maxwell growled and surged forward past Rebecca, nearly bowling Bruce over in the process before Tig and Lerrick hurried in after him.
“Now, wait a minute! This is private property here, and you’re trespassing! Don’t think for a second, I won’t—”
The gnome shrieked when Maxwell slammed the front door shut, ripping the black rope out of Bruce’s hand, the other end of which was tied to various levers built into the interior of the door to help the gnome open it.
“Ow! What the fuck’s your problem?” Bruce glared at the shifter, rubbing his rope-burned palm.
Maxwell removed his hand from the door and glowered down at the magical they’d hoped to find alive. “Quiet.”
When the shifter stormed into the house, signaling for Tig and Lerrick to fan out and clear the other rooms, Bruce squinted up at Rebecca, still rubbing his palm with a grimace. “You really let that brute call the shots?”
“Usually, no,” she said. “Tonight? Maybe.”
It all depended on what happened next and how fatally undermanned they were. If Bruce was attacked in his home, the team would have to engage an unknown, unseen adversary who killed indiscriminately and had already set their mind to destroying Shade in one night.
“No one asked you to be here,” Bruce groused as he hurried after Maxwell, then decided against it. “You’re still trespassing. And I don’t know any of you yahoos any better than I know that newest model of augmented M4 carbine magitek in your hand. If you won’t leave willingly, don’t think I won’t use what I’ve got on me to blow you fucks to pieces.”
At this point, the gnome’s threat was just for Rebecca as the rest of her team inspected his home and prepared for the worst as best they could.
Leaving her on explanation duty.
“We believe you may be in danger, Mr. Urholder,” she said.
“Don’t fucking call me that!” he shouted, clenching his eyes tightly shut, fists shaking at his sides.
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Bruce, we didn’t know if we’d get here in time, but we’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to protect you.”
The gnome gawked at her, unblinking, as if she’d uttered the secret password to instantly shut down all his brain function. Then his awareness returned before he screeched, “From what ?”
Dammit, that was a hard question to answer.
Rebecca grimaced, then settled with the only answer she had. “From knowing us , apparently.”
“I don’t know you!”
“Rebecca Knox,” she said with a brusque nod that made her feel like she was reporting to him . “Shade Commander. We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting personally until now, but I know your work with magitek. Plus, you delivered our first contract two days early. That’s not the kinda thing I forget.”
“Huh. Things must be extra exciting for you, then.”
She was just trying to find common ground here, but clearly, that wasn’t working.
“Oh, that’s right…” Bruce snapped his fingers at her, his face lighting up with recognition. If he’d been taller, Rebecca had no doubt he would have snapped in her face. “I remember now. Your people had a bunch of custom work for illusions with all those whackadoo specs.”
“Yeah, that too,” she said as footsteps from the rest of her team finishing up around the house grew louder toward her.
“Okay. I get it.” Bruce looked her up and down with a smirk. “Let me guess. You’re wearing one of those cuffs right now, huh? I’d recognize my artistic mastery anywhere.”
She fixed him with a deadpan stare, fighting back the urge to pick the little shit up by the scruff of his neck and haul him across his own house. “No cuff. You’re not that good.”
The gnome barked out a laugh as Maxwell rounded the corner into the front room and Tig and Lerrick converged from around the other side. “All rooms are cleared. Windows and doors locked. No sign of anyone else on or around the premises.”
“Not yet.” Rebecca scanned the front of the house and nodded. “We’ll post up in this room. There’s no reason for them not to use the front door, especially when they’re expecting a one-man job in his own home. I want a barricade right here.”
Maxwell nodded, then signaled for Tig and Lerrick to get to work.
Rebecca headed out of the front room, scanning the house for anything they could use.
The gnome waddled after her. “This is all very fun and exciting or whatever, but who are they, exactly?”
“We anticipate an attack on your home and an attempt on your life tonight,” Rebecca replied as she shoved the chairs away from the dining table in the adjacent room. “Which is why we’re here.”
“Yeah, you said that part already. And listen, I appreciate the fact that anyone even gives a shit, but who are we talking about, here?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Which, right now, is secondary to making sure you don’t die and we—”
“Whoa, whoa, hey! No!” Bruce waddled after Maxwell, who carried an old worktable by its top to haul it with him toward the front room. “Now wait just a minute. That’s an antique! And what the hell does that have to do with—”
The gnome gasped in horror when the worktable crashed down onto its side to join the other overturned pieces of furniture comprising this last-minute barricade in his home. “For fuck’s sake! No one told you to re-decorate. And what the hell is actually going on ?”
“Enough!” Maxwell whirled on the gnome, snarling and nearly lighting up the room with the next violent flash of his eyes before he towered over Bruce and thrust a finger in the gnome’s face. “Forget the furniture. Cut the babble. And stay out of our way while we try to keep you from getting murdered.”
Bruce glowered back up at the shifter, then slapped Maxwell’s finger out of his face, as if they were the same size and an equal match if it came to physical blows.
“ Why ?” he whined.
Maxwell clenched his fist, looking like he was on the verge of sending it into the gnome’s face before he shook it at their target instead with another growl. “It’s our fucking job.”
The gnome huffed out a laugh, unaffected by the shifter’s threatening nature, and folded his arms. “Fine. But I’m not paying you.”
Rolling his eyes, Maxwell spun away from Bruce to return his attention to readying for the battle they all expected.
When he found Rebecca glaring at him in disapproval, he blinked, paused as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, then growled out another sigh and stomped her way to look for more barricade furniture.
As he passed her, Rebecca leaned toward him and muttered, “Hannigan…”
Whatever he heard in her voice was enough to stop him long enough to meet her gaze.
She dropped her voice to not be overheard above the scraping, banging, and clunking of Tig and Lerrick working on the barricade while Bruce muttered angrily to himself and whined about his unsolicited remodel. “I need clear heads and self-control on this tonight.”
“And you’ll get it,” he hissed in equally low tones. “As long as the stunted chipmunk stays away from me.”
Then he blew past her to supposedly scour the next room for more hardy defensive materials.
Not that a barricade would do much good against the enemy if this mystery attacker was taking out dozens of magicals at a time without leaving a trace or alerting the victims to their impending deaths. But something was better than nothing.
And now she couldn’t help worrying about her Head of Security a little more than usual.
The only times she’d really seen him lose control, before his last episode in the Security office today, was when Rowan had still been part of Shade—the Blackmoon Elf always showing up out of nowhere, crowding their personal space, sticking his nose in their business, and pushing Maxwell’s buttons like it was his life’s purpose.
Rebecca couldn’t fault her Head of Security for taking his aggravation out on Rowan then.
But Rowan was out of the picture altogether and had been for weeks.
So what was Maxwell’s excuse now?
M inutes later, the barricade in the front room was as good as it was going to get, and Rebecca and her team fell back behind it, ushering Bruce along with them to take up their defensive positions and wait this out together for however long it took.
With no way of knowing how long that would be.
After several minutes of tense silence while they waited for the inevitable, Bruce had apparently forgotten Maxwell’s warning already.
“Seriously?” he asked with a snort, glancing from one stranger in his home to the next. “You came all the way out here tonight to bust down my door and tear apart my home just so we can all sit here together playing Hide-and-Seek?”
Maxwell let out a slow, measured, unnaturally long exhale through his nose and said nothing, his silver eyes centered on the front door.
Tig and Lerrick both looked to Rebecca, neither of them wanting to address the gnome themselves and risk speaking out of turn.
Rebecca wouldn’t dignify Bruce’s valid and justified questioning with an attempted response. As far as last-minute operations went, they were really winging this one, with hardly any intel and not even the bare bones of a half-ass plan.
So she changed the subject.
“We’re still working on the details, but hopefully you can help us with some of that. Have you had any strange, out-of-the-ordinary interactions lately?”
Bruce gawked at her before barking out a bitter laugh. “You mean other than this shitshow you brought to my house?”
“Yes. I’m referring to any time before my team and I arrived.”
He scrunched up his face, as if giving it a moment of deep contemplation. Then his expression fell flat. “No! Nothing else comes to mind!”
“Any surprising new business arrangements? Unfamiliar people showing up in places you frequent? A feeling of being watched?”
“Listen, the last time I did any business with anyone was my work for you and your merry little band. First the upgraded new comms units, then the illusion bands. Hell, it’s not like business isn’t booming or anything, but you guys keep coming back for a lot of stuff. Like, these are abnormally large orders, okay? I haven’t had to even think about finding new clients since the witches set me up with your guy from—”
“Shut up,” Maxwell hissed, raising a fist to signal for silence as if they were a bigger team approaching a target on foot.
The gnome snorted but held his tongue as he eyed the shifter up and down.
The thick silence surrounding them seemed unnecessary at first, until the gentle crunch of gravel and an even softer, whispering footfall on the first wooden porch step outside made Rebecca’s pulse leap and stutter in anticipation.
Maxwell slowly raised his augmented weapon to aim squarely at the front door and whispered, “Someone’s here.”