“Fucking Adley is there. In his office.”
“What the− how?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t cameras in his office. He must have arrived at some point when we were getting ready. We missed him on the security feed somehow.”
Quinn chimes in through the channel. “It’s worse than that, they moved Bennet, too. We’re searching all the cameras for him, but there are a lot of rooms without live feeds.”
Fuck. Shit. I blow out a breath. I should have known it wouldn’t be this easy.
Mara is cool as ever, a genius even under extreme pressure. “Tony, get Jackson and Micah pulled back to the others to regroup, and watch for any movement from Adley. Quinn and I will search the backlogs to find the footage of where they moved Bennet.”
“Guys, pull back. We have a problem. Adley is in his office. I repeat, Adley is there and you need to pull back. Turn around and head to the end of the corridor, then hang a left.”
“Ten-four,” Jackson exclaims as if this were just a game and not a life-threatening, terrifying moment. That guy takes nothing seriously. I feel like he would get along with Quinn. Or maybe they’d hate each other. They might have too much in common.
I watch as the two of them make their way back through the building, giving them instructions to where the others are. Quinn and Mara locate Bennet in one of the labs about halfway from where both teams are currently.
“Tony, it doesn’t look good. Bennet’s in rough shape from what we could see.”
I swallow. Shit. “How rough?”
“Barely alive.”
Taking several deep breaths, I watch as the two groups converge and catch each other up. Maybe there’s still a way we can get out of this without being noticed.
They all enter the room where Bennet is being held, and I lose visual contact. I hear a gunshot, thankfully somewhat muffled by a silencer, and listen as they confront someone. Six says he’s alive, and I let out a breath. It sounds like they’re talking to a nurse, asking what they’ve done to Bennet.
The nurse is either too afraid to speak or isn’t willing to tell them much. I hear Micah say that Bennet has internal bleeding.
Mara’s voice comes over the channel again. “Quinn, we’re going to need to have some kind of medical transport on standby. I don’t think they’re going to get Bennet in that van safely.”
Luis leaves the room and heads into another room, pulling a gurney back. I listen in, wishing I could see them, as they work together to get Bennet up on the gurney.
I almost miss when Six leaves the room.
“Six, get out of there, go back to the others,” I hear Lukas tell her. But she keeps walking.
“Oh no,” says Mara. “That’s the room I was telling you about.”
During our pillow talk last night, Mara explained she had been planning to blow up the building after we got Bennet out and all the data transferred. I probably shouldn’t have been as shocked as I was. We were hoping to have the guys get the potentially comatose pregnant patient out of there as well, but since Adley is back and Bennet is in such rough shape, we moved to Plan B− which is getting our guys the fuck out and letting the feds take care of the rest.
“She doesn’t want to go in there, Lukas,” I tell him.
He shouts as we lose sight of her, and it seems like she’s taken out her earpiece. It’s still online, but she isn’t responding at all.
The monitor shows me that trouble is on its way and we are fucked. “We’ve got trouble,” I warn them. “Adley is on the move with four armed guards. He’s headed toward your current location.”
There’s a flurry of activity as the guys shout for Six, and then shit hits the fan. An alarm blares, red flashing lights making visibility difficult. We can see and hear the alarm from where we are.
“That’s not good,” Quinn mutters. Understatement of the year.
We’re fucked.
I watch on the monitors as Luis runs into the hallway just as the door closes behind Adley. “Luis, you’ve got four guards out there − I’m working on getting the door open, but you’ve got to try not to get killed.”
He ignores me, or maybe he hears me and doesn’t care. A gunfight ensues in the hallway. Luis puts down two of the guards like some kind of action hero, but two more flank him.
The two remaining guards fall, Jackson shooting them from behind. I have to look away when Luis puts a bullet in each of their heads, making sure they’re not going to get back up.
