Chapter 27
They were close enough that everything from here on out mattered.
A door closing too hard, a light where there shouldn’t be one, a voice carrying across the still ground, or even a change in Zombie that told Lego the dog had caught something none of them had yet identified.
Any of it could alter what waited at the end of their approach, and none of them had come this far to announce themselves before they knew whether Kelsey was inside.
Tyrone looked toward the hill hiding the property somewhere ahead and felt the familiar shift settle through him.
Glenna went behind the door inside his head, and Kelsey went there with her.
To keep his mind in the game and ensure no fuck-ups were made, the people who mattered too fucking much and all the emotions that came with it had to be locked away from the mission he was about to execute and the blood he was about to spill.
If he walked onto that property thinking like a terrified father instead of the Operator who had spent years learning how to function while fear and adrenaline did their best to fuck with his judgment, he became a liability to the little girl he was there to save.
He refused to be that. When Gunnar raised his hand and signaled them forward, Tyrone, the fledgling father figure, took a back seat, and Zorro, the operator, took over.
The surrounding agricultural land gave them useful concealment in some places and fuck-all in others, forcing them to work with what the terrain offered rather than what they might have preferred.
They stayed off the obvious approach, moving carefully enough not to announce themselves while still closing the distance, until the first edge of the roofline finally appeared beyond the rise and the rows of vines.
Zorro’s pulse attempted to speed up, but he forced himself to control it by breathing four squared until the ice once more flowed in his veins.
They slowed from that point because everything Remi and Jorja had been able to give them from TOC had brought them this far.
Imagery and property records couldn’t tell them what was happening inside a building at midnight.
They needed their own eyes, and none of them wanted to risk Kelsey by allowing impatience to substitute for information.
The element split as planned. Zorro went with Gunnar and Colt, and Talon took Zombie with him as he peeled away with Levi, Marco, and Mojo to establish their positions.
Lego would keep the Malinois close and under control rather than letting him range through ground they hadn’t cleared.
Their ‘Most Likely COA,’ the most likely concept of operations, had told them to treat the dog as the asset he was, without pretending Zombie could tell them what was happening behind walls, was the way forward.
They were still working the ground plan, and the helicopter remained nothing more than a contingency until or unless Grizzly decided otherwise.
Zorro settled behind cover and finally got his first unobstructed look at the property.
I’m here, baby girl.
Noooope.
He shut that thought down before it could grab hold, threw it back behind the door in his head, and forced himself back to work.
The two-story house sat beyond a low stone wall with dark shutters and a detached garage, while the other buildings stood farther back, exactly where the imagery had placed them.
Petrovic’s sedan was parked near the house, and the panel van remained beside the outbuilding.
He started checking a list off in his head.
No exterior lights—Check.
No visible movement—Check.
No dogs—Check.
There was nothing to tell him whether Kelsey was fifty yards away from him or if she had already been moved somewhere else. He raised his optic and began working across what he could actually see, checking windows, doors, the roofline, the courtyard, and the known camera positions.
Man, I wish the Hollywood shit of seeing through walls actually could happen in real life. That would be fucking useful right about now.
The house offered nothing helpful at all.
Nobody wandered past a window long enough to be identified, nobody stepped outside and obligingly told them how many people were inside, and there was no indication whatsoever that a terrified six-year-old was being held on the property. His comms clicked softly.
“All stations, Nemo set.”
A short pause crackled through the device. “All stations, Lego and K9 set.”
Midas confirmed his position, followed a few seconds later by Mojo. Each one was followed by the clicks of the others, confirming they acknowledged and confirmed.
Waiting for the property to settle around them while they watched for any sign their arrival had changed its normal rhythm was a torture that wouldn’t have been out of place in a dungeon from the Middle Ages.
They all understood the necessity of it.
They’d done the same thing more times than Zorro could remember, but knowing why he was lying there doing nothing didn’t make the waiting any less fucking brutal.
A minute passed, then another, and by the third his muscles had begun to complain about being held motionless while every instinct he possessed screamed at him that Kelsey might be close enough to hear if he shouted her name.
Not a fucking sound, or Grizzly will send you back to wait with Horizon and the fucking bird.
Eventually, a faint glow, likely a phone screen or flashlight passing close enough to the glass for them to catch it, moved across one of the ground-floor windows. It disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared.
“All Stations, Radar. Movement, ground floor. Window two.”
Clicks filtered through the comms unit with acknowledgments that the rest of the men had received the message. Zorro counted them off in his head and added his own.
Several minutes later, a shape passed behind one of the upstairs windows, there and gone too quickly to give them anything useful.
Zorro couldn’t tell whether the person was male or female, adult or child, and he refused to turn a fucking shadow into Kelsey simply because he desperately needed it to be her.
“All stations, Zorro. Movement, upper floor, window three.”
Once again, he received the clicks of acknowledgment from his team. They waited again.
Hurry up and wait fucking sucks.
Every muscle in his body tightened as the door they were watching opened and a man stepped outside wearing a heavy jacket.
He moved several yards away from the house, and Grizzly sent the info over comms. Zorro brought his optic onto him and waited until the bastard turned far enough to give him the profile he needed.
Petrovic.
Recognition came with a surge of rage so immediate Zorro tasted it. There he fucking was, the fucker who had been part of selling Kelsey in France and the man who had walked onto Four X’s property and stolen her again.
It took a hell of a lot of willpower to keep his finger indexed along the weapon instead of moving it toward the trigger.
He wanted Petrovic dead with every fucking cell in his body, but forced himself to ignore the bastard.
Kelsey was the mission, and he’d already told Gunnar exactly where his priorities lay.
He wanted his little girl more than he wanted the bastard who took her, dead.
Petrovic stood in the darkness for close to thirty seconds before pulling out a phone.
“TOC, Grizzly,” Gunnar whispered into comms. “Petrovic visual, rear of main structure. Phone in hand.”
“Copy. Grizzly,” Remi answered, “TOC is watching for traffic.”
Zorro continued tracking him while Petrovic spoke too quietly for them to hear, pacing several steps before stopping again.
A few seconds later, Remi came back over comms. “All Stations, TOC, nothing I can attribute to him.”
“Copy,” Gunnar replied for them all.
Petrovic ended the call, but instead of returning immediately to the house, he stopped and looked toward the outbuildings.
Zorro’s attention shifted with him. The bastard stood there for several seconds before changing direction and walking away from the house.
He crossed the open ground, reached the outbuilding and unlocked the door, allowing a brief spill of light to escape before he disappeared inside.
If she’s in there, at least the asshole left a light on for her.
Even before he could twitch, Gunnar’s hand came up, silently ordering him to hold in place.
Zorro held, watching seconds stretch out before Petrovic emerged alone. This time, when he opened the door, he flipped off the light before closing it behind him and securing the lock from the outside.
You’re a dead fucking bastard. You just don’t know it yet.
Petrovic walked back toward the main house as though there were nothing remarkable about locking a storage building in the middle of the fucking night.
Zorro couldn’t drag his attention away from the door.
Petrovic locking it from the outside didn’t prove Kelsey was inside, or even that there was another living soul in the building, but every instinct he possessed had sharpened while he watched the bastard walk away.
Thirty seconds ago, the outbuilding had been another structure they needed to account for.
Now it mattered a whole fucking lot more.
“Grizzly.”
“I saw it.” Their eyes met briefly, and nothing else needed saying. Gunnar waited until Petrovic disappeared back into the house before touching his comms. “Lego, Grizzly. Shift eyes to the outbuilding. Keep Zombie with you and do not approach. Tell me if anything changes.”
“Copy.”
Zorro stared at the closed door and silently begged a little girl who couldn’t possibly hear him to give him something, anything that might ease the pain of not knowing she was okay, that he couldn’t quite keep under control.
The minutes dragged past as he watched the dots that represented Lego and Zombie work their way closer to the outbuilding on his iTak wrist device.