Chapter Fifteen
Parker.
Aleksi comes bounding down the stairs with a big fucking smile on his face. He’s huge, so seeing him giddy about something has me questioning his sanity a little bit. “You alright there, big guy?”
He shakes his phone at me. “My new toy is here.”
I can feel when my brows shoot into a V, and I look him over. “Your new toy?”
He grins again, nodding like it’s Christmas Eve and he was just told he can open one gift. “Yeah, c’mon. It was dropped off by a drone.”
Yeah, I'm gonna need this guy to teach me some things. I get up from where I’m sitting on the couch, where I was taking a break from looking at all the screens and helping Aleksi put all the pictures Raven took with her phone together.
From what we were able to gather, the facility is only one story, but it spans about a hundred yards long, or the length of a football field.
There are about twenty rooms, in addition to what Damon thinks might just be a lab, and other types of rooms like a fucking break room for employees.
Which means there’s probably security up the ass at this thing, and no telling how many.
I am the unconquerable…
Grabbing my coat, I follow Aleksi out of the manor and let him lead me all the way to the middle of the gardens that haven’t been tended to in quite a while.
He looks a little lost at first, zigzagging around, holding his phone up, and then laughs when he finds the box with his new toy.
“Fuck yeah!” He grins triumphantly, holding it over his head.
“What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
As soon as we’re back inside, he tears it open with an enthusiasm you’d see in a kid.
I’m not gonna lie, I'm getting a little excited myself. He reminds me a lot of my twin brothers, Luke and Sean. Dayton was always a little more serious, taking after me, but the twins were hilarious little hellions. Fuck, I really need to call Rory and make sure she’s okay.
When Aleksi pulls out another box that’s in the box, he goes at it again with the same gusto, practically dancing when he uses a switchblade to cut the tape, and when he pulls out the thing from inside, he turns to face me and gestures towards it.
“It’s a drone,” I reply dryly.
“It’s a thermal imaging drone with infrared.”
I hike a brow.
“Military grade, man!”
“Didn’t you already have one of those?”
He shakes his head, gets to work turning it on and hooking it up to the virtual reality-looking goggles it comes with, and then does something with his phone.
Next, he pulls out the remote control that looks like a gaming one.
“I only had infrared. This one is so strong you’d be able to detect if someone farts. ”
I cover my mouth and rub my hand over my lips, sucking in my cheeks to not laugh, reminding myself he’s technically a kid with adult money—only a year or so younger than Jonas. “And that’s… a good thing?”
He side-eyes me like I just asked the dumbest question. “You coming?”
I lift a brow. “Now?”
“Yeah. Look, everyone else is asleep. I need to be about… seventy yards closer. This thing came fully charged. It makes no noise. It’s the dead of night.
We can do a full sweep of the grounds. Find all the entry points.
If they have guards, they’re probably using secret entrances, not just the front and back doors. ”
“Fuck it, let’s go.”
“Good. I was really hoping you’d drive. I’m not used to driving on the left side yet.”
I grin. “Yeah, grab your fart detector, let’s go.”
He chuckles, slips his phone into his pocket, hands me the control, grabs the drone, and we head out quietly.
I park between two large trees as close as I can to the property Sabrina’s currently inside of.
I have to stop myself from checking my phone every few minutes to verify that she’s okay.
It’s a fucking compulsion at this point.
She hasn’t moved from one side of the manor since ten.
I really hope she’s sleeping well and with the door locked.
Aleksi slides back into the passenger seat, hands me his phone, takes the remote control from the glove compartment, and puts the goggles on.
“Blades won’t freeze?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “They shouldn’t. I’ve seen footage from these things going up Everest to try to find hikers.”
“Military grade,” I repeat.
“Yup. Shouldn’t you be familiar with them?”
I shake my head. “Technology advances so fast these days. On the field we carried what we could on missions in our rucksacks. Something that large would’ve slowed us down.
We had our night vision goggles, MREs, guns, ammo, medical supplies, water…
everything we needed to survive. If anything, the guys with the gizmos and gadgets were maybe a few miles away every now and then, but mostly, we were on our own. ”
Aleksi doesn’t reply, just swallows and gives a barely-there nod.
He then starts moving his thumbs and I can hear the whirring of the drone from where I’m sitting behind the wheel.
I grab his phone to see what he’s seeing through infrared and press the screen record button so we can go over it later with the others.
Nothing really, a few foxes, maybe. The small numbers on the side show he’s about twenty feet in the air and climbing steadily above a few naked trees, and finally, the beginning of the estate.
Its long, sprawling front lawn and the roundabout driveway with a fountain in the center that’s currently off. It looks fucking normal.
“Here we go,” he whispers, then switches the camera to thermal imaging as he climbs higher. “Got one suit standing in the front.”
He goes off to list a few more, then flies over the large home until he’s in the back.
He goes forward and backwards, scanning every inch.
There are more men in the back, setting things up on the snowy ground, moving about the property until they move further back into the tree line about fifty yards away.
Evergreens that still have their full bearings, sitting high and mighty, clouds over them, hiding them.
Every now and then we see more and more warm bodies dispersed throughout, placing things. I count about twenty different people.
My stomach drops through my ass. “They’re setting up some kind of animal traps.”
The tension in the car builds, and so does the silence.
The trees keep going and going and going.
Nothing but yards and yards of it. He moves higher up, going to the end of the property where there's a stone fence sitting about twelve feet high. Even if Maksim jumped and was able to reach the end… shit. He wouldn’t make it.
There’s something that glitters on top of it.
“Switch the camera to infrared and drop as low as you can.”
Forty seconds later we both let out a whoosh.
“That’s fucking glass.”
I shake my head. “I’ve only seen shit like that in second and third-world prisons.”
“I’m going back up.” He does, and scans the rest of the yard. “Wait. Are you seeing this?”
I nod. Four men go into what looks like a large tool shed big enough to house small machinery and don’t come back out. Four more go in. “That’s our entry point.”
“Not with that fucking wall.”
He’s right. It’s not like we can just knock on the front door. We’d have to storm the fucking manor. I have to fight the urge to look at Sabrina’s dot again, but it all feels fucking heavy.
I am the unconquerable.
“How many guys do we have?”
“Thirty. Fourteen more coming in tomorrow night.”
“We don’t know how many total they have staffed inside.”
With a curse, Aleksi flies the drone out of the area and gets back out of the car to land it.
I stop screen recording the thing as soon as it lands.
He puts the drone in the backseat, hops into the passenger side, and I drive us off, not turning on the headlights until we’re a few miles from Winters’ Manor. Neither of us says a word.
Once inside the manor, we climb the stairs back to the library.
I check on Sabrina to see her little dot pacing back and forth.
God, what the fuck is going on in there?
Is she okay? I’m sure Kane made sure she’s comfortable, but I know her mind.
I know her psyche is probably snapping being so close to Maks and not knowing how to get to him.
Don’t break, baby…
With a frustrated groan, Aleksi parks his ass in the chair he’s claimed as his.
His elbows go to his knees, and he drops his head into his hands.
“I need to get into their camera feed…” He sits up and leans back, eyes on the ceiling.
Suddenly he leans forward. “Oh shit.” He whips his phone out and pushes a number, then brings it up to his ear.
“Hey, Franny, sorry to wake you. Yeah, could you come here? I think I have a plan… No, I’ll call Rossi and Bianchi…
thanks.” He hangs up quickly but doesn’t put his phone away, doing as he said he would.
“What do you have?”
He holds up his finger and calls Rossi, then Bianchi, and then Maverick.
Then he connects his phone with the computer.
One by one they come into the library, grim looks on their faces from being woken up at four AM.
He calls us over and we’re all standing behind him.
We go over everything we saw, and I pull up the screen recording from Aleksi’s phone onto the monitor so it’s clear for them, pausing every now and then to fast forward, getting to the important parts, including the traps and the “shed.”
Franny looks even more annoyed. “And why did you need me?”
“You have a company here, don’t you? Sullivan’s.”
A smile spreads across her face, and she begins nodding.
Then she explains to both Maverick and me, “They specialize in security cameras. But we have access to all of the feeds. I usually use it for major corporations run by questionable CEOs so my husband can use the footage as extortion if need be in the US. But over here, it’s just known as home security for more…
highbrow customers known as Ironclad. We don’t have to use it as much, but it’s good to have just in case for instances like this. ”
“A place that big, how long would it take for you to reroute their cameras?” I ask.
“Not long. The only thing that may take a bit longer is implementing my software. It goes in like a virus, letting us find any type of ware that coincides with having extra feeds more people don’t have access to.
You say there’s a facility underground, which means the only people that may have access to that are the owner of the home and the people sitting behind the monitors.
Last year we found a sex trafficking ring in New Mexico by accident,” she informs with a discontent hum.
“I can go in and install all of it myself.”
“Absolutely not.” We hear from the doorway, seeing Angelo, her husband, standing there.
She rolls her eyes. “Other than Casino Night, they wouldn’t think they’ve seen me. If I go in wearing one of Sullivan’s uniforms sans makeup, I can get in. Plus, men like that, they wouldn’t suspect a woman,” she smirks. “Only Italian men seem to know their women are nefarious.”
Aleksi huffs out a laugh. “Trust me, Russian men aren’t as foolish as you think.”
Maverick grins. “Are we forgetting my wife is known as ‘Karma?’ She used a fucking Molotov cocktail to blow up the manor Sabrina went to with Kane.”
Aleksi lets out a low whistle. “She’s so fucking cool. If Niko heard that, he’d probably have to go jerk off ferociously.” He holds up two large fingers. “TWICE.”
I burst out in a laugh.
Maverick loses his grin and emits a very low growl.
“Okay… settle down,” Franny starts, diffusing the tension. “I’ll have one of the managers from Ironclad bring me a uniform in the morning.”
“Francesca…” Angelo warns.
“Amore…” She gives him a soft smile and cups his cheek; the tenderness in their gazes makes me miss Sabrina something fierce.
I need my girl back. I need her in my arms. I need to smell her spun sugar, berries, and cinnamon scent.
I need to feel the silkiness of her hair, her skin, her lips.
Fuck. I cast my gaze downwards, away from their intimate moment, as Franny soothes her husband with quiet, little words only they can hear.
I am the unconquerable...
But what if right now, I’m the fucking demon waiting to be unleashed?
I pull up the app and find Sabrina has not only moved from her room in the manor, but the history shows she’s been fucking moving around for the past two hours—slowly. She’s gumshoeing. Probably trying to find a way to get to Maks from the inside or driving herself crazy trying not to break.
“Don’t break, baby,” I mutter to myself.