Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Tessa’s one of them, so that means we’re dealing with five hostiles before I can get to her.
“One signature is stationary,” she says. “Inside the cabin, north room. The others are all mobile.”
Tessa.
Stationary means restrained. I know exactly what that means and I file it in a place I’m not going to open until this is over, because if I open it now, I won’t be able to do what needs to be done. She needs the operator right now. She needs me cold, precise and functional.
“Exterior positions?” Sully asks, his voice barely above a breath.
“One covering the access road,” Josie says over the comms. “Northeastern corner of the property. One on the south side, mobile, running a patrol pattern. Cycle looks like approximately four minutes.”
We’re close enough now that the cabin is visible through the trees—a low structure, single story, one light burning behind blackout curtains on the north side. A black SUV sits in the clearing near the front.
I’m doing the math on approach vectors, on the patrol cycle, on how long it will take Sully to cover the distance to the access road guard, when it happens.
A scream.
It cuts through the dark and the trees and the two hundred yards between us and the cabin and it hits me like a physical impact—one short, raw sound that is unmistakably Tessa and then silence, which is somehow worse.
I’m moving before I’ve decided to move, intent only on barreling through the door and saving her. I’m brought to a dead stop by two sets of hands on me. Reid’s got my upper arm in a vise grip, Sully locked around my waist.
“Don’t do it,” Reid says, voice low and hard.
“They’re hurting her.” The words come out flat, scraped clean of emotion.
“I know.” He doesn’t let go.
“Reid—”
“Not yet,” Sully growls low with quiet. “We’re not ready. We go now, we compromise the approach and we get her killed.”
“They’re hurting her,” I say again, because I don’t have anything else.
“Yes,” Reid says, and his grip on my arm doesn’t ease. “Which means they don’t have what they want yet. They need her talking, Cole. They will not kill her until she talks.”
I stand in the tree line with my teammates restraining me, Tessa’s scream still ringing in my skull, and I make the hardest decision I’ve made in my life.
I relax my body. “You got thirty seconds,” I say, knowing that’s unreasonable.
“Two minutes,” Sully says, letting go of his hold on me. “We do this right.”
I release a long breath and put everything I’m feeling into a box that I must close up tight. I become who I was trained to be, because that’s what she needs from me right now. Not the man who loves her but the operator who’s going to save her.
“Josie,” I say. “Patrol cycle on the south guard.”
“He’s at the far end of his pattern,” she says immediately. “You have approximately three minutes twenty before he’s back in play.”
“Reid, south guard is yours. Sully, access road. Simultaneous on my mark.” I look at both of them. “Silent. Clean. We don’t alert the interior.”
They both nod.
“I’ll move to the cabin on your confirmations. Stack on the front. Sully comes around to the back after he’s secured his man.” I look at the structure through the trees. “Josie, the moment Reid and Sully are ready, I need you to loop the cabin’s exterior cameras.”
“Already working on it,” she says. “I’ll have them on a thirty-second delay. They’ll be watching old footage.”
“Dozer,” I say.
“Right here,” he says from Miami.
“Thank you for the suits.”
A pause. “Bring her home, Cole.”
I look at Reid. I look at Sully. Two of the best operators I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with the best. We don’t say anything to one another, but it’s understood that they’re putting their lives on the line for someone I love.
They both nod to me and then dissolve into the dark, moving with the fluid silence of men who have done this in places far more unforgiving than a Cascade foothill property. I watch them go and then I move toward the cabin, low and fast through the tree line, closing the distance in the darkness.
Forty seconds is a long time to wait, but then Reid’s voice comes over the comms. “South guard is down.”
Another eighty seconds is an eternity, but I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear Sully’s voice. “Access road clear.”
“Cameras still on loop,” Josie says. “You’re blind to them.”
Now it’s showtime.
I run low to the cabin wall, trusting my teammates are approaching from their directions. I press my back to the exterior siding, listening to the muffled sound of voices inside just barely audible through the structure. I can’t make out words.
I creep to the front door, test the handle with two fingers. Unlocked, or close enough that it won’t matter. The wood looks thin.