A slight pause. “Nothing.”
“That’s your area! Check it out! There must be someone else out there.”
“Copy that,” Mercer said.
“What about the two in front of the house?” Donovan asked.
“They’ve gone inside,” one of the men said.
“Son of a bitch,” Donovan said. “Someone take out the porch light.”
“Copy that.”
A second later the lamp above the door shattered, and the yard went dark.
“Light’s disabled.”
Donovan took a deep, audible breath. “All right. Everyone but Mercer, move in. But carefully. There’s a sniper out there somewhere. Mercer, you find that shooter.”
“Copy,” Mercer replied.
With Mercer hunting for the sniper and Dailey monitoring the thermal scanner, Donovan’s six-man team was down to four.
“Well, this is exciting,” Nate said.
“Exciting” was not a word any cleaner wanted associated with the job he was working on. Routine, dull, uneventful. Those were the descriptions most desired.
“You hear even the hint of a siren, that’s an automatic abort,” Quinn said.
“Good by me.”
So far there had been no signs that any of the neighbors had noticed anything wrong. The trees and the distance appeared to be working in their favor.
Just then two men slipped out of the cover of the woods. The first crept to the tree that was near the front door of the house. The other headed toward the Maxima.
“In position across from the door,” a voice said on the radio.
“We have a problem,” a second voice said.
“Like I hadn’t noticed that,” Donovan said.
“More of a problem. I’m at the Maxima. The driver is dead. Bullet caught him right below the ear. Doesn’t look like a random shot to me. He was definitely targeted.”
Quinn blew out a breath. A bad situation had just gotten worse.
“Fine,” Donovan said. “We are still on mission. Dailey, what do you see?”
“The heat signatures are all together, not far inside the house.”
“Is anyone looking out the window?”
“No one’s near any window.”
“Good. Abel, you and Cox move in close. See what you can hear.”
“Copy that,” Abel responded.
The man at the car and the one behind the tree began running in a crouch toward the front door.
“I think I jinxed us with that ‘exciting’ comment,” Nate said to Quinn.
“Yeah. I wasn’t going to point that out,” Quinn said.
“Thanks for your consideration.”
There was a sudden movement from the far side of the car. A third man was heading quickly across the front lawn toward the house.
“Donovan, is that you?” Abel said.
“What are you talking about?” Donovan said.
“There’s someone about thirty feet to my right. He looks like one—”
A muzzle flashed. It was followed almost immediately by the disintegration of one of the windows next to the front door. Another flash. Another window shattered. Quinn saw Abel and Cox dive for cover. When he looked back at the front yard, the third man was gone.
“Shooter! Shooter!” Abel yelled as he and Cox sprinted toward the Maxima.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is going bad fast,” Nate said to Quinn. “Someone’s got to be calling the cops by now, don’t you think?”
Quinn nodded. “We’ll hold our position so we can act as eyes for the others. But if there are any bodies, we’re leaving them.”
Abel and Cox circled the Maxima.
“He’s gone,” one of them said.
“Dailey, scan the yard,” Donovan said. “See if you can pick up something.”
