16. Addie
ADDIE
DEXTER brITAIN – DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING
The tips of my fingers tapped against my thighs, rolling through the keys of a remembered song in a way that I tended to catch myself doing when my emotions were heightened.
It made sense that I’d catch myself playing the thigh-piano now, seconds away from re-entering a dark compound.
The added threat of Sebastos Varco coming for me didn’t help—armed with a gun and homicidal ideation.
The second I thought his name, my hand stopped tapping and moved instead to grip my Glock. Sebastos wasn’t the only one with a kill list—and his name was at the top of mine.
Avenging Fleur meant more to me than some stupid Graduation assessment.
My gaze flicked over to Commander Varco almost unwillingly, presiding over the control screens. Perhaps today wasn’t the wisest opportunity for vengeance. It was still fucking tempting, though.
The alarm sounded, piercing my eardrums and shocking me into movement.
Go time.
I drew my gun, dashing through the door Eth kicked open as he followed close behind. Each member of our team crisscrossed through after us, fanning out through the furnished room, devoid of hostiles but full of dusty clutter.
“Clear,” I said softly but succinctly—unwilling to give our position away so early on in the task. “Left or right?”
Eth frowned, his gaze flicking between both doorways, unsure. “Both. Half of you follow me, the other half go with Addie. Clear what’s on the other side, then wait for further instruction.”
“Got it, boss,” Dak said, joining me on the right side of the room. Mercy and Bodie followed, while Ace, Aidan, and Cohen lined up behind Ethan.
I clenched my teeth when Bodie decided my ass was the best to follow, but turned back round to the rickety wooden door, refocusing on the task at hand.
“Three… two…” Eth murmured through the comms, and Dak wrapped his free hand around the metal doorknob in preparation. “One.”
He wrenched it open—somehow soundless—allowing me to drop the dummy hostile on the other side. I heard shots fired behind us, but put it to the back of my mind. Eth was more than capable of handling himself.
“Clear for now,” I said into my mic.
“Clear here, too,” Cohen answered.
“We’re coming to you, Ads,” Eth said.
I felt, more than heard, them approach from behind, and only once Eth’s solid presence rejoined me at the door did we pass through it.
Distant gunfire sounded from the other end of the compound—too many shots to count—giving away Blue Team’s position. They weren’t close, but that level of fire was absolutely a cause for concern.
Eth and I exchanged a loaded look, silently debating our current tactic. Sure, they might have located Lockwood, but that didn’t mean he was unarmed, alone, or willing to cough up the correct keyword.
“Addie, secure the hallways. Dak—the room on the right. Mercy—the room on the left. The rest of you behind me, ready to storm in.”
Without waiting for anyone else to move, I sidled up to the corner and peered around.
Half-expecting someone to jump out at me, I was wary, but the hallway beyond was empty.
Dark. Suspicious. Someone could easily be waiting around the next corner, or in one of the adjoining rooms, but those weren’t my problems—ensuring no one could sneak up behind my team was.
“Clear,” I murmured, creeping just past the only two doors in this section. I held my stance, exactly like Pearce taught me—gun raised and ready—while my team entered the rooms in tandem.
Ten shots echoed behind me as I waited for the “clear” to come.
My teeth clenched tighter, knowing that those sounds just gave us away.
A further five shots popped off—then silence.
“Guys?”
No answer.
“Eth, what’s going on?”
I knew something was wrong when they didn’t immediately give the all clear, but those instincts were confirmed when a sadistic drawl crept through my earpiece.
“Ethan can’t come to the phone right now, princess.”
I froze. Ice crept through my veins in lieu of blood and needles prickled down my spine.
Fuck.
“Put down your weapon and turn around slowly, or I’ll have Eric shoot you with the gun he has trained on you right now.”
“What game are you playing, Sebastos?” I asked, pursing my lips, my mind whirling rapid-fire through all my current options.
I quickly came to the conclusion that there weren’t many.
With my finger still on the trigger, I pretended to do what Sebastos demanded, hoping like fuck no one else would pay for this. I reached down, gun parallel to the floor, and twisted slightly to peer behind me.
Varco wasn’t kidding. Eric’s tree-trunk legs filled my periphery ninety centimetres away. He even had the audacity to whistle as I bent over in front of him.
Second mistake, dickfingers.
The first was that he thought holding me at gunpoint was in any way effective or safe for him.
Instead of placing the gun calmly on the floor as he expected, I shot twice roughly in his direction, then took off down the hall. The scream of agony and subsequent thud of a body hitting the floorboards informed me at least one of my bullets had torn through Eric’s flesh.
Once around the corner, though, I floundered. I had seconds at most to ascertain a good hiding place, at least until I worked out what happened to the rest of my team. And to my instructors, I guess.
I ignored the somersaulting of my heart at the thought that I was potentially the only person left—but no. Pearce would have stopped the assessment if his brothers went down. He’d have personally seen to it that they were okay, and if not, he’d be the first in here, avenging them.
Since no alarm had sounded and the fake compound was still dimly lit, I figured that if nothing else, Beckett and Lockwood were still alive. Which meant that they could be hunting me too—along with Sebastos or whoever he’d sent after me thumped down the same hallway.
Remembering perhaps the only place I could go from our first run-through, I took the first right, then darted into the room. It contained nothing but an empty dining table and mismatched chairs, and over in the far corner, the same dummy hostile I’d taken out in round one.
Thankfully, the person following me chose the room on the left first, giving me precious seconds to get into position.
Moving swiftly and silently, I holstered my gun, climbed onto the table, and pushed both hands through the ceiling.
Or more accurately, through the manhole cover in the ceiling, conveniently placed directly above said dining table.
I knew it was intentional, but I also hoped Seb was too stupid to see it.
The door crashed open just as I placed the cover back down, the eerie drawl of my pursuer drifting up to where I lay still—barely breathing—mere feet above his head.
“Little bird, little bird… come out, come out, wherever you are.”
I repressed the shudder that longed to tear down my spine.
“You can try to hide, that’s fine. Makes the game a little more interesting, doesn’t it?”
The sounds of tossed furniture echoed through the ceiling.
“I will find you, birdy. And we’ll have a grand old time when I do.”
The door slammed shut behind him, and thudding footsteps lumbered back down the hall, heading in the direction of that central room Eth was supposed to clear.
Counting to five, I finally dared to breathe, my breath fleeing in a shuddering exhale.
That was entirely too close. I didn’t dare think about what Sebastos would do in a heavily supervised assessment, with his father right there… he didn’t seem to mind. He was spurred on by the presence of daddy dearest, and I didn’t want to consider the ramifications of that.
Girls were Swallows—not Eagles.
I shook my head, though it took precious seconds longer to convince my fingers to unfurl.
Crescent-shaped divots appeared like welts in the palms of my hand, right above the mostly-healed zipline welts, and only the thought that Pearce or Commander Varco or some tech guy down below was watching my freak-out in live action successfully shook the panic from my system.
Upon rolling over, I noted that the fake compound was incredibly realistic. There was a whole network of crawlspace above the rooms below, mirroring their layout. The only thing missing between them were walls, which made moving through them a whole lot easier.
Thank fuck I’m small, I thought, shimmying beneath shiny silver ductwork that lay like lines on a map between rooms.
I moved slower the closer I got to that central space, where Seb’s hostility was muffled but getting louder with every passing second.
“Give me the codeword, professor,” he snarled, followed by a distinct thump.
I need to see. I need to know if Eth’s alive.
GODS DAMN IT, I need you to be alive, Ethan. Don’t you dare fucking leave me, too.
My mind whirled through all the possibilities. Short of cutting a hole in the ceiling—a dead giveaway to my location—the only direct way to see what lay below was through the ceiling vents.
Which still had ductwork attached to it.
I crept closer, mindful of every second it took.
Mindful that each one could mean the difference between life and death.
With panic lodged as a physical lump in my throat, I slid the dagger from its sheath on my vest. Soundlessly, I lined it up with the first of four screws holding the pipework to the vent opening, and began twisting.
To the sounds of muffled grunts and nasty threats, I twisted.
To the shock of hearing my name spilling from Sebastos’ lips again, I unscrewed.
“Has anyone found Sinclair yet?” he barked.
The person or people on the other end of his comms must have answered no, because the next thing he did was swear and thump something—or someone—else.
And finally, to the soundtrack of Seb’s livid vitriol over having not found me yet, the last screw came free.
Sliding the piping across, I froze when it made a crinkling sound. Thankfully, it hadn’t been heard by anyone below, and I exhaled, realising the sounds were muffled by something far worse.