“Yes, sir.”
“Your comm working?”
“Yep.” Davis tapped his ear. “Did a tech check with Jay.”
“Good.” Adam pulled the gun from Davis’s holster. “You stick close to Chase, and you watch his back. If there’s any trouble, you give the signal, and I’ll come get you.” He popped the magazine, did a visual inspection, and reloaded the weapon before replacing it. “You keep this holstered unless you need to use it to protect yourself or your team. Understood?”
Davis nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Alright,” Adam said, clapping the teenager on the shoulder. “Go tell these motherfuckers to get their asses in gear. We roll in two.”
In typical Davis fashion, he left as quickly as he’d arrived, eager to implement the order he’d been given, and Eve’s love for the boy, the man, and their special bond swelled until her own vest felt too tight.
“You saved him too,” she whispered, reclaiming Adam’s hand and squeezing his fingers.
“No.” He looked down at her, his gray eyes expressing a depth of emotion he didn’t often show. “He saved me.”
Headed north,the blacked-out vans sped through the rolling hills of Los Angeles. In the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, Adam checked his watch. “Systems ready?”
“On your order,” Jay replied from the second van.
“Marker one,” Zander said as he turned left to stay on North Beverly.
On the outskirts of the city, and with little traffic on the roads after midnight, the drivers maintained their speeds as they approached their target.
“Marker two.” At the fork in the road, Zander stayed to the right to take them onto Coldwater Canyon Drive.
“Initiate shutdown,” Adam ordered.
“Roger that,” Jay said, and the entire neighborhood went dark.
“Watches synced.” Adam hit the timer. “Three hours. We follow the ops plan. We get in. We secure the targets. We get out. Zero risks taken. We clear?”
A volley ofclearsreached his ears.
“Six minutes to target,” Zander said, slowing the van to take a hard left onto Monte Vista.
With the light of the moon obstructed by a decent amount of cloud cover, the street lay in darkness. High privacy hedges lined both sides of the road, with an occasional gate or concrete wall breaking up the dense greenery.
Anticipation hanging heavy in the air, no one spoke as they drove deeper into the rich neighborhood. The first op since Tak had been taken and the colonel murdered, this mission was about more than stopping a trio of serial killers and recovering their victims.
Used to being the best of the best, these men wanted to prove their worth. To prove to themselves and to each other they had what it took to operate as an elite unit with or without the support of the United States Government behind them.
“Utility road on the left.” Zander slowed again, and the vans disappeared onto a narrow lane used for garbage pickup and accessing the rear of the mansions by service vehicles. Running perpendicular to the Santa Monica mountains, the lane traversed the greenspace butting up to the Manor’s sprawling property, providing excellent cover for a covert entry.
“Transmissions?” Adam asked.
“Negative,” Jay replied, confirming there were no alarm systems sending any signals from the manor to a remote monitoring site.
“Marker three,” Zander said, rolling to a stop at a closed gate.
“Entry team go,” Adam ordered, and Grant and Cody jumped from the back of the van, guns at the ready. Jay and Doc joined them, and in less than thirty seconds, Jay had rerouted enough power from the generator to the gate to override the failsafe lockdown. Another thirty seconds and the gates were opening with barely a sound.
Gravel crunched under the tires as Zander pulled in, Chase hard on his bumper. They parked behind a service shed, out of sight of both the lane and the manor.
“Team One has the lead,” Adam said.
“Roger that,” Grant replied, and with him, Cody, Doc, and Zander melted into the darkness to scope out their approach. Adam wanted to be sure there were no risks associated with entering the house before Eve got anywhere near it.
