7. Ember #2
At the sight of him reaching for the walkie-talkie on his cluttered desk, Blaine erupts into movement. He disregards Warner’s yell, launching across the room to elegantly vault the man’s desk.
Shouting emanates from the fast-moving tangle of limbs as the two men grapple. Hyland grabs the walkie-talkie when we close the distance, peering down at the floor where Blaine has the poor sod restrained with an arm pinned behind his back.
“Madden.” Warner sighs.
“Do you want anyone to know we’re here?”
“Get off me!” the man screeches. “I’ll call the police!”
Blaine yanks his arm higher, slapping a hand over the man’s mouth to silence his scream. “We are the fucking police.”
Damn. I do not find this hot.
If I repeat it enough, I may believe it.
When Blaine looks up at me and winks, I nearly lose my panties. My eye roll earns me a dirty grin next. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and the asshole is proud of it.
Taking the handcuffs that Hyland tosses at him, I watch Blaine trap the guard in place. His proficiency at securing handcuffs with only one hand is far too intriguing.
“Where should we put him?” Warner muses aloud as his eyes scan our surroundings.
Josh turns to study the barebones space. “Perhaps…”
CRACK.
With little ceremony, Blaine smashes the guard’s skull against the concrete, turning his limbs to jelly. Blood trickles down his unconscious face, causing a stream of choice words to spill from Warner.
“We’re operating within the confines of the law, Madden!”
“You are,” he agrees. “I’m here to get the job done.”
“He’s a bystander!”
“That’s your problem to worry about. Not mine.”
Pushing the guard’s limp form aside, Blaine deftly rises to his feet. Naturally, he stops to brush the odd speckles of concrete dust from his t-shirt and leather jacket like the mere sight offends him.
“Onwards? He won’t be out for long.”
When he steps past us all to lead the way, Hyland makes no attempt to block his path. “Fucking lunatic.”
“You just realising that?” Warner spits in frustration.
“Hey, you pardoned the psycho.”
“Don’t remind me.”
We catch up to Blaine then inch deeper into the terminal, passing empty offices filled with filing cabinets and dark desktop computers, boards plastered in shipping manifestos and half-empty vending machines.
The farther we traverse without seeing another soul, the deeper my anxiety sinks its claws in. Everything about this place seems normal. There’s nothing to suggest it’s a front for something far darker and illegal.
“There’s nothing here,” I whisper.
Warner walks beside me, his gun still raised. “If Luis was here, he’s long gone.”
“Did they know we were coming?”
“I don’t see how.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Keep moving,” he replies in a low tenor. “We need to check for any evidence.”
Beyond the offices and storage rooms, a vast loading bay is cluttered with neat rows of packed pallets. Each row is organised alphabetically, labelled with plastic-wrapped customs documents and shipping manifestos.
We carefully search every inch of the massive storage room, hackles raised and guns at the ready, but not a single threat presents itself. The place is empty. Not so much as an unlabelled box or splatter of blood to suggest anything illegal passed through here.
With each corner of the main floor assessed, we converge in the centre of the cardboard box city to debrief. Our infiltration was silent, invisible. Nothing to tip off anyone inside. Yet Luis isn’t here, and we’re empty-handed.
“Anything?” Axel whispers into our ears.
“Beyond the security guard Madden knocked out?” Warner grunts. “Not a damn soul.”
“Well, fuck. That’s disappointing.”
“We’ll sweep the place in case Luis has anything stowed away. Looks like it may be a false lead, though. The vehicle was abandoned, and if he was here, he’s already cleared out.”
“Bollocks,” Axel hisses. “I’ll pluck the rest of that asshole’s teeth out for wasting our time.”
“Why play this game?” I frown at our surroundings.
“Dominic Pit is a snake,” Hyland seethes from behind me. “He’s going down for a long time and he’d do anything to disrupt our investigation. This is him fucking with us.”
“No.”
“No?” Warner echoes.
“We have to be missing something.” I scan up and down the rows of boxes. “Dominic held out for hours before giving us this information. What was he protecting if Luis is already gone?”
Silence falls. Palpable. Tension-riddled. Half-formed thoughts fill the still air all around us, the echoing emptiness holding secrets we can’t seem to grasp hold of.
“He wanted us to come,” Josh eventually breaks the quiet.
“Why?” Warner flaps his empty hand. “If no one is here, then this isn’t a trap.”
A living darkness falls over Blaine’s face, capturing my gaze. “A trap is only a trap if you don’t know about it. If you do know about it… then it’s a challenge.”
“And what better way to lure us in than by giving us exactly what we asked for?” The words make my throat spasm.
A distant-sounding crackle causes us to collectively flinch, all searching around for the source of the odd sound. When a voice trickles from the PA system tucked into the corner of the lofty building, fear chews away at the lining of my stomach.
“Close.” A voice cackles. “But not everyone left.”
“Motherfucker,” Hyland blasts. “Get down!”
The first red beam of light appears from high above us. In those precious few seconds, my brain is too slow. It slices through the dust too fast for any of us to comprehend, landing on my immediate left.
Josh.
The scream that rips out of me feels deafening in the silence of the sniper shot. One moment, we’re standing in a close circle. The next, Josh smashes to his knees with violent force, a burst of red exploding from his unprotected throat.
“GET DOWN!”
My eardrums protest the volume of Warner’s shout. I’m barely able to process the blur from Blaine throwing himself in my direction. Watching Josh grapple at his spewing throat is sending me into a spiral.
Another sniper shot streaks above us, slashing straight through where Blaine had been standing. His body crashes into mine, bones smacking together, sending us both plummeting to the concrete floor.
Deep pain bites into me as we twist and roll, grinding to a halt behind a fully-loaded pallet. The feeble protection allows me a moment to look up, frantically searching the space where we’d stood.
“Josh!” I scream.
Around his curled-up body, deep crimson splatters coalesce to create an oceanic wave of red. Josh gargles and jerks like a fish on a hook as blood pours from his neck, forming a geyser-like spray.
“No!” Hyland howls.
He and Warner have taken cover behind a pallet of wrapped boxes, watching Josh choke on his own blood. None of us can move an inch to step in or help him. Not without meeting the same fate.
“Shooter,” Warner pants into his comms.
“Incoming!” Archer booms back. “Location?”
“Main floor. We… have a casualty.”
“Who?” Axel’s voice wails into my ear canal.
Their urgent yelling fades into the background as Blaine shifts his weight on top of me, using two hands to tightly cup my face. His long, lithe body presses me into the floor, ensuring I’m fully covered.
“These boxes won’t protect us from a bullet,” Blaine rushes out. “We need to move now before they take another shot. Get ready.”
“Josh… Shooter… The…”
“Ember? Snap out of it.” Fingers dig deep into my skin, pinching my jaw in a tight grip. “I’m going to get us both out of here, but I need you to focus.”
After a second, I summon a numb nod.
“Good girl. Let’s move.”
Blaine rolls sideways to free me. I scrabble up to press my back into the stack of boxes, spotting the others crouched in preparation to move. We all take one last look at Josh, his gargling becoming quieter as the pool of blood grows around him.
Survival mode feels like slipping back into comfortable clothing. I let the cold detachment sink into me, wrapping me in a chill that crystallises the world into one simple task. Outlive my opponent.
We’re still in the centre of the building, far from the entrance we slipped in through. Backup won’t reach us yet. Blaine’s right—this room is a shooting gallery. We wandered straight into the lion’s den.
“We have to move.” I shift in anticipation.
Warner raises a fist, clenched in a clear sign to hold. “Steady.”
“What about Josh?” Hyland’s growl is thick.
“Too late. He’s gone.”
The fury spreading on Hyland’s face is fucking apocalyptic. He spares Josh’s now-still body a long look, face warping and eyes darkening with threatening storm clouds. My heart shatters for him. For Warner. For another loss this represents.
“Hy?” Warner clasps his shoulder. “You need to hold it together.”
“Yeah.” He visibly swallows.
“Ready?”
“Affirmative.”
“Then let’s go.”
Hyland pulls the gun from his side-holster, checking the clip and tensing in preparation to flee. When the speaker high above us crackles again, we all freeze, going stock-still.
“No one else has to get hurt. We only want you, 768.”
Icy prickles nudge the back of my mind.
That voice…
“Shooter is positioned at approximately two o’clock from me based on the direction of the shot,” Blaine murmurs into his earpiece. “Fire three shots, then bail left, ducking behind that pallet there.”
“You’re assuming there’s only one gunman,” Warner rasps.
“Praying.”
“We’ll be shot either way,” Hyland utters grimly.
“Then there’s no other option,” Blaine asserts.
“Agreed.”
Warner shakes his head in consternation. “On my count.”
All hunched in anticipation, we wait for Warner’s cue. He jabs a hand to the left, fingers outstretched, then he rises to fire off three successive shots high into the terminal. Hyland takes the opportunity to dive after us towards the next pallet.
“Go, go, go!”
More shots. A whoosh of displaced air. Boxes exploding behind us as we duck and dive, treating each flimsy stack as an armoured fortress rather than cardboard and shrink-wrap. Between popping off shots, Warner sticks close on our tail.
“There!” Blaine points towards a fire escape.
“Move,” Hyland barks. “Faster!”
I’m half-shoved through the heavy metal door, a shower of dust raining down on us when a shot embeds itself in the wall mere inches above our heads. We tumble outside, emerging into a litter-strewn back alley. Cloying salt in the air tells me the water is close.
“Keep moving!” Warner bellows.
Blaine urges me forwards, a hand at my back. “Go, Ember!”
Somehow, I end up at the front of the convoy, leading us towards the light spilling into the alleyway. Tall cinder block walls guide us to the pier where a built-in loading dock stretches before us, directly attached to the open sea.
But we aren’t alone.
A welcoming committee awaits.
My feet skate to an abrupt halt, almost causing Blaine to slam into me before he pivots. Directly ahead, a semi-circle of armed assailants train multiple guns on our group. One by one, each masked figure slams the lid down on Luis’s intricate trap.
No… wait. It can’t be.
That isn’t Luis.