Jenkins and I both ignored the question.
Still looking me in the eye, Jenkins dipped his chin in acknowledgment and the feral part of me relaxed. “All right.” He knew she was mine. I could breathe.
Turning around, he reached into a duffel bag he’d placed on top of the closed trunk and pulled out a tablet. Turned back around and handed it to me. “I found some footage. I think it’s our bad guys. Can you confirm?”
The video was pre-loaded on the screen. Grainy. Black and white. Looked like low-quality shit from a convenience store or gas station camera. I pressed the small triangle on the screen to play the recording, Lyra leaning in close to get a better look.
She stiffened when the cyborg leader walked out of an unmarked building. A large, black SUV pulled to stop in front of him. The other two aliens from the morgue were sitting in the front seats. The leader opened the rear door, got in the back, and the vehicle pulled away from the curb.
“That was about twenty minutes before the security system went down at the morgue,” Jenkins said.
“You get the license plate?” I asked.
Jenkins snorted like I was an idiot. “Of course. Stolen.”
“Shit.” One more dead end. “And the building? Where is this camera?”
Jenkins rattled off an address, then added the pertinent information. “It’s about three blocks from the abandoned warehouse where we found our dead cyborg.”
My instincts told me the unmarked building in the video was most likely the location of their base of operations. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Neither do I.” Jenkins studied Lyra’s every move as she gently removed the tablet from my hands and played the video again. She watched every second of it without blinking, then rubbed the side of her head, just below her ear, as if something was hurting her.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
Her attention leapt to my face and she shoved the tablet back into my hands. “Yes. Sorry.”
She must be upset, seeing the thugs who nearly killed us. Apparently, Jenkins came to the same conclusion.
“So, those are our perps? The guys who killed Doctor Pearson?” Jenkins asked.
Lyra turned to answer him, her voice calm, soft, but firmly in command. “Yes. They have murdered many people, Kevin. So many.” She looked into my eyes, and I forgot to breathe. “They have to be stopped.”
“I agree,” I assured her.
“If these are the bastards who killed my wife, I’m not sitting here while you two go play World War III with the aliens.” Jenkins didn’t bother looking at me as he spoke but stared directly at Lyra. I’d explained as much of the situation to him as I could on the phone. “Please. Let me at these motherfuckers.”
Only Lyra knew the address of the Atlan compound. Her operation. It was her call.
“All right. But I can’t guarantee your safety.” She glanced from Jenkins to me. “Either of you. If you choose to come on this raid, you could be killed.”
We both ignored her and walked toward the SUV I’d been driving. Before I could get back into the driver’s seat, Lyra’s hand settled on my shoulder. I stopped and turned to her as Jenkins climbed into the back.
Lyra held out her hand for the key fob. “We’re going to have to get past their security. I’m driving.”
11
Ethan
Twenty minuteslater Lyra pulled up next to a guardhouse in front of what looked, from the outside, like a military compound. Twelve-foot concrete walls were topped with tangled barbed wire. The gate in front of us was reinforced steel with tire spikes a few steps past it for extra protection. I leaned forward in the passenger seat and looked as deeply into the compound as I could as the sun set, pretty sure I saw a sniper’s perch as well as laser tripwires covering the property.
These guys didn’t fuck around.
The main house—and its insanely high fence—was hidden in the middle of a large piece of land surrounded by swamp, trees, dense foliage and a canal system that made entry and exit nearly impossible from anywhere but the designated security checkpoints.
“Jesus. This is a supermax in the middle of the swamp.” Jenkin’s spoke from the back seat, his face just over my right shoulder between the side of my headrest and the window.
“Be quiet, please. Let me do the talking. We’re not in yet.” Lyra rolled down her window when one of the biggest motherfuckers I’d ever seen stepped forward out of the guardhouse. He had to practically bend at the waist to make his face even with the driver’s side window and we were in an SUV with big tires, not a little sedan. How tall was this guy? Seven feet? Taller?
