Chapter 24 Critical Strike
Chapter twenty-four
Critical Strike
Lance followed Jon’s instructions, keeping the creek at his right, and in no time, he’d run out of forest and onto blacktop. It was a smaller, one-lane road in subpar shape which soon led to a left-handed off shoot labeled Leeland Drive, exactly as promised.
He dropped low, moving more carefully as he crossed onto the property.
It’d be awfully funny if the cartel bigwig tried screaming about trespassing, especially with his law enforcement hooks untethered.
That didn’t mean he wanted to expose his position sooner than necessary.
It’d be best if he could get proper eyes on the place—get the lay of the land—before the next wave of shooting and death washed over.
The shrubs and trees that faced the road obscured a rather tall, definitely old, brick wall. The wall had been outfitted with staggered security cameras more befitting of the times.
Lance grinned. Cute. He let his natural power build, braced his fingers on the dirt, and launched himself up with a hard shove.
The ground disappeared from beneath his feet.
Foliage blurred in his periphery. The toes of one boot touched down at the top of the wall, between the two camera’s mounted positions, and he locked eyes on an open spot of ground below.
What followed wasn’t even like kicking off so much as allowing the flow of the current to carry him the rest of the way.
By the time he felt the stomach-churning tug from defying gravity, Lance was back on solid ground and drawing a deep, settling breath.
It’d been at least a couple of years since he’d seen action so close-up and he was absolutely enjoying it more than any sane man would. But sanity was overrated.
Lance trailed along the periphery for a bit, noting the perimeter of the property and its lacking interior security.
The cameras were posted on exterior mounts and couldn’t possibly see over the walls.
He saw no signs of a secondary camera system.
No current ran through the air to forewarn him of an electric fence of any type.
He sensed nothing beneath his feet, or unnaturally nearby to his feet, to suggest traps hidden beneath the surface.
Either Pretty Bird hadn’t had the property long enough to convert it, or he was a bit too confident. There was, perhaps, also the chance that he’d had—until very recently—a number of armed men patrolling the property.
Regardless, Lance ran into no opposition on any sensory level as he did his due diligence.
He detailed a mental map of the external portion of the property, located the two-car garage and the vehicle that had only been parked for a couple of minutes before his arrival, and took the time to drain the batteries in both vehicles.
It wasn’t exactly hard. He spotted no sign of other transportation—no dirt bike, no four-runner, no RV or even dry-docked boat.
If Pretty Bird had something else, it wasn’t more impressive than one of those hovering skateboard things.
Lance found himself a nice vantage that overlooked most of the house front and lowered until he was poking the barrel of his own rifle through the stems of a poorly trimmed flower bush.
The bush was one of three that lined up to a healthy tree, all angled, so his body wouldn’t be visible from the house.
Not unless someone came out one of the top-floor rooms and peered the right direction over a veranda, and there wasn’t much Lance could do about that.
If he had a danger of exposure, it was more likely to be a bird.
There were birds all the fuck over the place. Chirping in the trees like it was some sort of fucking children’s movie. It was enough to make a man rethink his phobias. Most men, at least.
Movement through a ground-floor window sharpened his focus.
He didn’t actually know what his target looked like, but as far as he was concerned, anyone walking freely in that house was the enemy.
Unless he happened to catch that the person had a bomb strapped to their chest with duct tape and tears streaming down their face, and really, at that point ‘freedom of movement’ became not so synonymous with ‘freely’.
Water dripped off a leaf over his position, landing on his upper arm once. Twice. Three times, until it formed a small, perfect puddle on his skin. The sensation of it made him want to rub at his arm, but he knew better.
Instead, he exhaled and spoke in the lowest whisper he was capable of. “Eyes on the house. Target should be inside. Perimeter is clear and vehicles disabled. But you’ll have to get past exterior security cams.” He paused. “Lot of fuckin’ birds, though.”
The water on his arm arched up, the way it might if it were going to form a bubble, then dissipated to drip and dissolve down his skin as nature took hold once more. But something about the exaggerated arch felt sarcastic, and Lance found himself fighting the urge to roll his eyes.
He lost sight of the figure he’d spotted through the front window for several long seconds.
The cadence of the overhead birds changed pitch and rhythm. Some of the birds moved location.
Lance held still, eyes forward, scanning the section of the large home that he could see from his vantage.
The better part of a minute passed before the familiar sound of rustling and booted feet rushing up from his flank reached his ears.
He counted at least three sets by sound and shifted one hand to press his fingers to the dirt, sending a pulse of energy through the ground for a better check.
It wasn’t as effective as Jon’s thing, but it served him well all the same.
Warm-blooded life still carried a natural sort of charge.
Four. There were four, one slightly ahead, and two in perfect synch. Those two were what had messed up his count. Herb and Foxe, then. Which undoubtedly meant it was Alex bringing up the rear, because Jon always led. He’d had trouble following even when they were still wet behind the ears.
Lance moved his hand back to his weapon and didn’t flinch when bodies crowded up behind him, attempting to use his cover for their group.
“I count three inside,” Jon whispered at his shoulder. “And whatever problem the birds might give us.”
“I really don’t wanna have to kill all these birds, J,” Lance said. He’d do it, of course. But hell, the birds were just being weaponized against their will. It was wrong.
“Hopefully you won’t have to,” Jon replied. He gave Lance a single pat on the back. “Any movement?”
“Barely.”
“Then we need to breach.” The direction of his words changed, indicating he’d turned his head. “Foxe, Herb, I want you covering the back. No one out, no one in.”
“Here’s hoping they don’t make us thrash the place,” Foxe replied. “Doesn’t look half-bad from the outside.”
“The Leeland’s had taste,” Jon said. “It’s kind of insulting letting these scumbags shit on their memory, honestly.”
“Then we should do a little spring cleaning,” Herb suggested.
Alex snorted.
“I’m game,” Foxe replied. “Just nobody tell my wife I came out here to clean with the guys.”
Lance felt his lips lift in a grin.
“Side entrance?” Jon asked.
“Around to the right,” Lance said.
“I’ll take it,” Alex offered.
Lance pictured Jon nod, but he kept his eyes forward.
Jon gave the word, and the guys behind him dispersed in relative silence.
There was little anyone could do about blending in, so the best strategy was to move with expediency.
Jon held at Lance’s side, and they waited in silence until Jon confirmed everyone was in position.
“How we doin’ this?” Lance asked quietly.
The birds further back, more likely to be in view of the rear of the home, began crying out as if alarmed.
Jon shifted as if settling. “I’m thinking unconventional.” He paused. “I’m going to flood them out.”
Lance blinked before a wicked grin split his lips. “You evil bastard. Thought you liked that house?”
“I’m not emotionally invested,” Jon replied. “I just don’t like these assholes souring the local history.”
“Fair.” Lance couldn’t relate to even that degree of sentimentality, not to anything connected to his formative years.
With the possible exception of the dog he’d had to leave behind.
But what he could relate to was wanting to protect the area in the present.
The man in the nice-looking house had threatened his girl, and his buddy’s girl.
That same man was in general a terrible piece of shit human.
So, he needed to be gone. For the sake of their community, for the sake of the women who’d come into their lives, and for the sake of every woman who might cross through the region in the next decade.
Seconds passed in stillness, the increasingly familiar sounds of the birds overhead becoming white noise in the background. Until the cadence of their singing lost rhythm and nearly all of them took flight with agitated cries. It was a mass exodus.
Then the front doors flew open and three men piled out, all moving in a rush.
Water rolled out with them, gliding down the front steps and soaking their shoes and ankles, all the way up to the hems of their pants.
Cursing and agitated tones of accusation and general frustration filled the air, every word in rapid-fire Spanish.
One of the men was thinner than the rest, with grayer hair and dark rimmed glasses that sat low on his nose. He looked older than the others by several years. And he looked exhausted.
The youngest of the three wore two visible weapons strapped to his body and was covered in tattoos everywhere he wasn’t covered in clothing. He was also the one doing the loudest, angriest shouting as the water sloshed over his Doc Martens.