Chapter 2
Present Day Pressed up against the moss-covered brick of the decrepit building, Adalyn reached up and slid the skinny wire and camera through the sliver in the blacked-out window. “You see anything?” she murmured through her earpiece as she crouched down out of sight. A big green dumpster blocked her from anyone walking by the alley. Not that many people were out near the docks at three in the morning.
“Yeah, move it slightly to the left,” Skye said. She was in the van with Colt and Brooks on the adjoining block. They were running a four-person op that had ended up being more complicated than they’d planned, but that was fairly standard she’d learned in the last few months.
Working for Redemption Harbor Security was a lot different than working for the CIA. Less rules, definitely working in “gray” areas, and she trusted her team to have her back.
“How’s that?” She shifted the angle again, wishing the window wasn’t so high up.
“Perfect. And…okay, I see both girls. Tied up, looking a little grimy, but no visible injuries. Two guards. We can take them if we move now.”
Adalyn didn’t bother to ask if they were going to call the cops for this. They would after they’d rescued the young woman they’d been hired to find. Her parents had assumed she’d run away, but after a deeper look, she’d been taken for ransom, along with a friend.
The parents were now talking to the Feds, but they were moving too slow, so here her team was.
“Meet me at the loading area,” Skye ordered.
Adalyn pulled the camera out, shoved it into her pocket, then hurried down the alley toward the long unused loading dock. At one time, this had been a warehouse for processing canned seafood and the scent of it was practically embedded in the brick. Now it was apparently a place to hold victims of professional kidnappers.
Well that little ring was about to get busted up and destroyed.
Moving quickly, Adalyn hurried past one of the security cameras they’d taken over remotely. For anyone watching on the feed, they’d see puddles of water scattered throughout and a dumpster so rusted out that it had never been stolen.
She reached the loading area at the same time Skye did. “Just us?” Adalyn asked.
“Yeah, Colt’s manning the front, Brooks is watching the feed and keeping an eye out. From where you were, the targets are about forty feet away from us. I’m going to go straight at them, you’re going to circle around and move in as backup for the girls. And to see if there are any extra tangos we don’t know about.”
Their intel said it should only be two, but Adalyn had learned the hard way not to trust intel a hundred percent. Never again. She nodded, ready to save these girls and get out of Oregon. Without a word, she moved to the regular-sized door next to the ramp and huge rolling door that would have accepted deliveries from semis.
Then Adalyn worked her magic on the door. AKA she picked the lock in seconds, part of her tradecraft. Whoever had secured this place had sprung for high-end cameras, but cheaped out on the locks. Stupid, but predictable.
Stepping back, she withdrew her own weapon as Skye took lead. She cracked the door open a fraction, waited, then opened it a little more and ducked in.
Adalyn did the same. They were both wearing balaclavas, gloves, and had their hair tucked up tight in their balaclavas. But there was no hiding that they were women.
Which didn’t necessarily matter, though men almost always underestimated her sex. Women too. Fine by her. She would take any advantage she could get.
Skye half turned, motioned with one hand that they needed to split up and circle around. She nodded and moved to the right, using the empty shelving as cover as she hurried to back up Skye.
On quiet soles, she moved fast, barely pausing when she heard Skye start talking.
“Well look at you two dumbasses. Nope. Don’t even think about reaching for those weapons. Hands up where I can see them. Yeah, that’s right. Keep them high like good boys and I won’t have to shoot you.”
Adalyn stepped out from behind the shelving, saw the two young women they’d been looking for, hands tied behind their backs on steel chairs that were bolted to the concrete.
One of them saw her, looked as if she was about to cry out, but Adalyn held a finger to her mouth. Crouching down next to them as Skye kept the two men focused on her, she pulled out her blade. “Your parents sent us,” she whispered. “We’re not with the police and we’re moving fast before their backup arrives.”
The girls simply nodded as she sliced through the thick ropes that had already created burns against their wrists.
Bastards.
At least the zip ties at their ankles were easier to free. “Run to the back door and wait there,” Adalyn said as the two of them stood on wobbly feet.
And that got the attention of the men now stretched out on their bellies. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Adalyn swiveled on him, pointed her pistol right at him as she approached. “Move and you’re dead,” she growled as she divested them both of their weapons. Then she zip-tied their hands behind their backs. Then their legs together. Last, she gagged them, though it didn’t stop them from snarling at her. When one bucked, she slammed her weapon on the back of his head and he went limp. The other simply watched her with rage-filled eyes.
“Two motorcycles coming your way. Get out of there now,” Brooks snarled through the earpiece. “I’m moving in as backup, but get out clean if you can. We want to avoid a shootout.”
And that was when she heard the roar of engines. Her heart rate kicked up as she stood and raced toward the back with Skye.
Skye paused to slap small explosive devices on two of the empty shelves but they were at the back door in seconds.
“They’re heading down the alley right toward you. Must be using the back entrance.” Colt’s voice was tight and Adalyn could hear him moving.
“New plan. This way,” Skye ordered, corralling the girls back the way they’d just come. The place was mostly desolate with empty shelving, the two bolted-down chairs and a small table where the two assholes had been playing cards and listening to a radio while they guarded their prisoners. “Stay put,” Skye whispered as the sound of the motorcycles roared past the blacked-out windows.
Adalyn held her weapon, but patted one of the girls, Cheryl, on the shoulder as Skye planted an explosive on the front door. “We’re almost out of here. We’ve got a vehicle waiting to take you to your parents.”
The other girl, Francine, the one who’d originally been kidnapped for ransom, simply nodded as tears streamed down her dirty cheeks.
“Cup your ears now,” she whispered as she did the same to one of hers.
Boom!
The front door flew off and outward into the street.
“Run!” Adalyn pushed them toward the smoldering entrance as the back door flew open. She fired into the dimness of the warehouse as two more explosions went off, one after another.
Then she turned and ran with Skye as the shelving exploded outward, some of the pieces acting as shrapnel.
“Stay down until I say otherwise!” Colt was helping the two women get inside the SUV as Skye sprinted around the front, jumped into the driver’s seat.
Adalyn dove into the third seat as they peeled away from the curb, Colt barely shutting the door behind them as Skye tore out of there.
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to foll—” One motorcycle zoomed out of the alley, arrowing straight after them.
“Remember what I said about staying down,” Colt ordered the girls.
The SUV was bullet resistant but the last thing they needed was a high-speed chase in a strange city where they were all carrying weapons. “I’m taking out the tires,” she called to the front before she shoved open the back door.
Aimed.
Pulled the trigger.
The tire exploded and it was like she’d cut the bike’s puppet strings. It jerked and swiveled, sending the helmeted man flying through the air. He landed on the hood of a parked Prius and didn’t move.
Skye took a sharp turn and Adalyn shut the door, could finally breathe.
That was when she heard the two girls crying softly.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmured as she pulled her mask off. “Everything is going to be okay.” She just hoped it was true. Because someone could be physically okay, but the mental thing was a whole other beast to wrestle.
Sometimes you never fully handled things that had happened to you. You just shoved it down deep inside and lived with it.
“So how’s Darcy?” Adalyn asked when Brooks sat across from her, his expression all soft and gooey after talking to his wife.
Laughing lightly, he pushed up the window shade next to their seats on the private jet. “Good. Misses me, but good. My dad and Martina have been staying at the condo with her and the girls so my angels are being spoiled.”
She half smiled as the engine rumbled slightly and the pilot made his announcement that they were taking off. “As they should be.”
“That’s exactly what I said.” He nodded slightly in approval. “Man, seeing my dad like this is night and day from how he was when I was growing up.” For a brief moment, his dark eyes were filled with storm clouds, but then he seemed to shake it off.
“People are complicated.”
“They really are. And I will drink to that.” He leaned across the aisle of the private plane and snatched up the beer Colt had just cracked open.
“Seriously?” Colt muttered.
But as if Skye had read Brooks’s mind, or maybe she just knew them so well, she placed a beer in front of her husband before cracking open her bottle of water. “What are you drinking?” she asked Adalyn. “We’ve got mostly everything on this plane.”
“Ah…water’s good for me.” She was still new to the crew, even if she’d been working with them for months—and had known Skye a lot longer. The woman was a legend at the Company, just as her parents had been. “But I’ll grab it once the plane evens off.”
Skye just shook her head and popped up, heading to the galley to grab a drink for her and probably snacks. The woman had ADHD and could never seem to sit still, Adalyn knew. Some might wonder how Skye had been such an effective spy once upon a time, but that obsessive nature of hers was why. Once she got locked onto something, nothing and no one would stop her from getting what she wanted.
“I think those girls are gonna be okay.” Brooks stretched out, kicking his boots up on the seat next to Adalyn’s.
“Yeah, me too,” she murmured as Skye tossed a bag of cookies in front of Adalyn, then sat with a bag of grapes for herself. Adalyn hadn’t even realized she was hungry, but her stomach rumbled as she tore into the bag. When Brooks made a move for her food, she sliced her hand in front of the bag. “Uh-uh. Adalyn doesn’t share food.”
He snort-laughed before pressing the control on his chair to lean back. She saw that Colt had done the same, his eyes closed as he lowered all the way back.
“You’re worried, I can see it,” Skye said, her own feet kicked up too, on the seat across from her.
“Not worried. Just…I don’t know. I wish I got to see what happens after. Or know more about what happened to them. Sometimes these jobs feel unfinished even if they’re not.”
“Yeah, I get it. We’ll probably hear from the parents who hired us in a week or so with an update. We almost always get updates. Happy ones. And those girls were lucky, relatively speaking.”
Meaning they hadn’t been sexually assaulted. No, the kidnapping ring had been truly professional. They took the kids of wealthy people, knowing that even if they had a “no-ransom policy,” people would pay anything for their kids. Well, most people. According to Skye, this ring had killed one teen when the father balked at paying. It had been a message and set a precedent, apparently. The kidnappers hadn’t been bluffing. “You think the Feds will figure out we were involved?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. We worked with the family through back channels and they don’t actually know who we are. Besides, we gave them their kids back. They’re simply grateful.”
“The world is full of monsters,” Adalyn muttered, beyond disgusted by what humans did to each other. Yes, she was happy they’d found those kids, but some days she could drown in all the awfulness.
“The good outweighs the bad. The bad are just louder and often times more powerful because they break all the rules. That’s why we break them too. Gotta even the scales.” Skye popped a grape in her mouth.
“Yeah, maybe.”
Skye looked at her then, hard, those ice-blue eyes of hers piercing. “I’m not saying you need redemption, but you think you do. And you’re never going to find it if you keep running from your past. Full stop.”
Oh. Ohhhhh.She blinked, then shoved a cookie in her mouth because she had no idea how to respond. She was used to working with spies and people who never said what they meant, or what was really on their mind. Or they simply lied because they could.
Not Skye. The woman was blunt and honest to a fault.
And she did not know how to respond to that little bomb. Adalyn wasn’t looking for redemption…was she? “I’m gonna get some sleep,” she mumbled around the crumbles of her cookie and looked away, feeling more exposed than she had in years.