Chapter Fifty-Four Alejandro
Chapter Fifty-Four
Alejandro
“If anyone walks out of here without my permission, a sniper will cut you down.” Rhett’s voice was a low hiss rattling over the speakers. Eerily calm, like a man who’d sold his soul long before he faked his death. “Would anyone like to test me?”
No one moved. Not even the woman at the podium. Or the couple hosting this fake charity event.
These weren’t average civilians. Criminals, yeah, but unarmed, like us. All of us motivated by different stakes. Rhett was banking on fear to turn them into human weapons.
“Didn’t think so. Now, you have thirty seconds to leave with the ring, Audrey. If you want to give your brother and friends a fighting chance, you’ll do as instructed.”
I saw the flicker of fear in her eyes despite having known this moment would come. I squeezed both her hands, probably more terrified than she was that she’d be leaving without me.
“Exit out the balcony doors,” Rhett continued. “A helo will be hovering. One of my men is waiting for you.” He clearly wasn’t the one piloting the bird. No rotor wash bleeding through the speaker.
“Once she’s outside, the next timer begins. You’ll have three minutes to kill them.” The command was meant for the guests.
A timer blinked to life on the ballroom’s far wall. Red digits. Thirty seconds on the clock.
“They’re highly trained,” Rhett warned. “Most of you in there aren’t used to getting your hands dirty yourselves. Well, here’s your chance.”
A beat of silence before Reed transmitted, “This is Delta Three. Two tangos are guarding the service stairwell leading to the basement. That’s our target location.”
We’d planned for this. Knew Rhett would trigger something loud and fast. But this kind of psychological warfare? He’d taken it to a new level. Fortunately, we’d prepared, and sent Reed from the room before Rhett had hijacked the auction.
I looked at Audrey again, who was still holding steady even if I wasn’t.
My grip on her tightened. We’d chosen to ignore this part of the evening back in our hotel suite, pretending as though it would never happen.
Now here it was.
About to become stained in blood.
And her walking out that door without me wouldn’t be an illusion.
When the lights came back on, Rhett announced, “First thirty seconds starts . . . now.”
The wall timer started its descent.
I pulled Mitch’s ring from my finger and pressed it into her palm.
She stared at me, fearless despite the tremble in her frame as she kicked off her heels. “Tell me what you said in Spanish upstairs. Before I go, please,” she whispered.
“After.” I needed to believe an after would exist for us both before I could tell her. Until that time came, all I could do was beg, “Go,” even though that very idea felt like the walls were closing in on me.
Her lips parted. Words on her tongue she’d have to wait to tell me after, too. Then she hiked up her skirt and sprinted barefoot toward the balcony.
“Neutralized the tangos. C4 confirmed,” Reed said over comms. “Enough to level the structure. Countdown active. Three minutes. I’ll handle it. Be safe up there.”
“Roger that,” Ryder replied.
Audrey cast one final look back. Locked on me. Then vanished into the night air.
The screen reset.
Three minutes. The timer ticking again. And that was the guest’s cue: Kill or be killed.
Two shots cracked in succession. One from outside the ballroom but inside the hotel. Sharp enough to stop everyone cold.
Someone had tried to sneak out and had been dropped. Screams from outside the doors leading to the interior part of the hotel followed. Then another shot from the same location as before. One more down. Red light, green light. With blood.
Reality snapped into the place. Survival instinct. And just like that, they surged.
The three of us collapsed together like a triangle. Muscle memory took over, each of us guarding a different axis.
“You don’t have to do this,” I warned, arms slightly raised, body at an angle to minimize target profile. “We’re going to get you out alive if you just stay calm. We don’t want to kill anyone.”
The hosts immediately advanced toward the bar with the French auctioneer and hid, letting us know they weren’t up for fighting. The few other women at the event also peeled back, wisely not engaging.
Most of the men nearby remained hesitant, staring at us, frozen, until two broke forward, charging me at once.
One swung a cane at me, which I parried upward, redirecting its arc, then stepped inside his guard and hip-tossed him onto the other guy. Nonlethal takedown. Efficient. Fast. Doing my best not to get blood on my hands unnecessarily.
I kicked the cane toward Ryder, who snatched it and cracked it across someone’s knee.
To my left, Hollis shattered her champagne flute on a table’s edge, weaponizing it. She buried the jagged stem in a man’s thigh and yanked it free, backing him off.
Mimicking her idea, I grabbed an empty, uncorked champagne bottle from the closest table, shattered it on the pillar to my left, and drove the broken glass into another attacker’s deltoid. Not deep enough to kill, but enough to drop him.
The three of us continued like this, moving out of triangle formation.
Strike. Disengage. Repeat.
Someone switched it up by flinging a folding chair at me. I ducked under it, popped up inside his guard, and landed an elbow to his throat. He went down, choking.
Comms lit up again. “Alpha Two here. Sorry we’re late to the party. What’s the status? Package on the move?”
Gray Chandler. That was a relief, even as someone clipped me across the jaw.
I shook it off. Countered with a knee to the gut, then shoved the bastard into a column.
“This is Delta One, glad to have you. Now, I need you to track down a helo that took off seventy-five seconds ago with the package.”
“Roger that,” Gray answered. “Expected target location?”
“No, last-minute change of plans,” Ryder grunted between dodging blows to the face while taking one in the side. He relayed the coordinates after dropping the asshole trying to shadowbox with him. “Expect obstacles on your way.”
“Alpha One. That’s a good copy. En route now. Alpha Team out.”
Another man lunged from my left. I sidestepped, grabbed his jacket, and redirected his momentum, using him as a shield. The guy behind him plunged a pen into his gut instead of mine.
“Delta Team, this is Foxtrot Three,” Hollis’s team transmitted, crashing the party now, too, as planned. “There are ten armed men nearing the hotel entrance. Do you want us to push or hold?”
Thankfully, Hollis’s people had the Helix operatives under surveillance after Reed had rejoined us at the hotel last night. Any second now, every Helix team member would be getting a message from Hollis’s twin brother: Pick a side or die on the wrong one.
Ryder answered mid-fight, panting, “Hold until the text has been sent. Continue on mission after that. We’ve got this room covered.”
Just barely.
“Roger, Foxtrot Three out.”
After clearing the wave of aggressors, the next group hesitated, staring at us with panicked eyes. Scanning the room, uncertain what to do.
“Foxtrot is preparing to engage with the snipers out here. After that, we’re moving in on Helix. Message sent,” someone from Hollis’s team shared as another man worked up the courage to attack.
Wrong move.
I twisted his wrist and broke it clean, dropping him.
I checked the ballroom timer, then my watch.
21:59.
Echo Team and Trevor would be breaching at 2200 hours. Visual contact made on Beau an hour ago. A lamb sent to the slaughter by Rhett.
The second I returned my gaze to the room, a new round of men looking to get beat up engaged.
They were sloppier. Desperate.
And then the crowd turned on itself. No cohesion. All fear and confusion.
Cracks of bone. Gasps. Screams.
Tables flipped. Bodies crashed into the decor. Furniture became shields and weapons.
Suppressed shots from outside the ballroom sounded. Closer this time.
“This is Foxtrot Three. Snipers down.”
Ryder was back to being behind me again, covering my six as I tackled a wiry guy with a jagged fork.
I swept his leg, then knocked the guy unconscious as he attempted to fork me to death.
“Lobby’s chaos,” someone on Hollis’s team reported as I hammered a guy’s jaw with my elbow. “Civilians are clear. Staff too. Helix is cannibalizing itself. Plan worked.”
“Good. Status on police?” Hollis asked her team.
“Five minutes out,” someone answered. “So we need to be gone in four.”
Before we could answer, Reed’s voice came over the line. “There’s a problem. I’m in the primary interface, but he split the encryption. Every thread loops back.”
“Meaning?” I ducked behind a flipped-over table as a woman joined the fight, launching her damn stiletto at me.
“It’s a logic trap,” Reed answered.
Hollis this time: “A logic-based kill switch? Was he expecting us to find it? Giving us a way to beat this?”
“Down to fifteen seconds,” Reed warned.
The red digits kept ticking. Everyone stopped moving.
They all realized the same thing: The bomb was still alive and so were we.
No one was safe.
“Wait!” I shouted when I uncrossed the wires in my head and realized what was going on. I jumped up from behind the table. “It’s a bluff. Another damn decoy.”
All eyes snapped to me.
“He’s a greedy, smart bastard. Not a mass-murdering psycho who will take down a hotel with innocent women and children inside it. It’s just—”
The timer hit zero.
I braced for impact in case I was wrong, as if that’d do any good to fight a blast and fiery inferno.
Nothing.
Just silence.
No explosion. No fireball or death.
“—a distraction,” I finished, exhaling the truth with every breath I had left.