With a stifled grunt, Jamal hefted a massive fell cannon up onto one shoulder. Yurik lifted a second one and settled it on the ogre’s other shoulder before slapping Jamal’s back with a gloved hand and tugging on his black helmet.
“Why does he get to be Rambo?” the halfling muttered.
“Don’t hold a grudge, rookie. Jamal was doing his job, just like the rest of us.” Rhynehart snorted. “Plus, O’Malley had a little trouble with the last fell cannon. Remember? The one that didn’t go off before you got shot in the hip?”
“Is he gonna be able to use those things, holding ‘em like that?”
“He’s good. That’s all you need to know. Pays to have an ogre on our side. Come on.”
The FRoE team moved quickly across the upturned dirt, heading silently toward the open construction site. Rhynehart jammed his helmet down over his head, and now the drow halfling was the only one among them with her face exposed for anyone to see. Won’t recognize me half the time anyway.
They paused at a thick drape of plastic sheet nailed over the unfinished entrance. The agent at the front pulled it aside and gestured with a gloved hand. The operatives split up into two groups, one heading inside to the left, the other to the right. Cheyenne glanced back at their parked vehicles and all the open doors, then she saw a blue and red zip-up jacket tossed onto a pile of dirt just outside the building’s frame. Weird thing to leave behind.
The split lines of FRoE agents filtered inside, and then Rhynehart was moving again right in front of her, and she followed. When he went right, so did she. Both teams moved swiftly over the unsanded plywood and the two-by-fours laid out to frame the different rooms. Cheyenne glanced across what was supposed to be the hallway and saw the other half of the team moving just as quickly, their black shapes flitting between the exposed beams and pieces of coated wiring dangling from the second floor.
A silver keychain flashed in the sunlight, and the halfling paused to squint across the unfinished building. Who brings a backpack to work?
She kept moving behind Rhynehart and the others, looking around to check for movement. Another plastic sheet rippled in the breeze, and that was about it. It’s too quiet.
The frames of what eventually would be offices opened into a much larger room at the center of the building. The FRoE team poured into it and surrounded the open area, rifles and pistols sweeping in every direction as they searched for the magical criminals who should’ve been here.
“What the hell?” One agent jammed his pistol back into its holster and ripped off his helmet. “There’s no one here.”
“Someone’s jerking you around, Rhynehart.”
Pulling off his helmet too, Rhynehart scowled at the open rooms and the tables lining the perimeter. “Hey, our sources are solid, okay? No, they were here. They brought in those tables and all these boxes. Shit.”
He spun around and surveyed the area.
“Looks like they forgot some things.” Yurik set his helmet down on one of the tables and peered into an open box. “All kinds of creepy shit in here.”
“Why would they just leave it all?” another agent asked, holstering her weapon.
“Hell if I know.” Rhynehart scratched the back of his head. “Problem’s not on our end. We timed this right.”
Jamal grunted and lowered into a squat before lowering both heavy fell cannons onto the partially constructed floor.
“Hey.” An agent pointed at the ogre and cocked his head. “Careful with those, Sasquatch.”
“Piss off.”
“At least aim ‘em away from the rest of us, huh?”
Yurik moved down the line of tables, peering into each of the open boxes. He hissed in disgust and stepped back. “There’s way too much shit in here. Pretty easy to just pick up the boxes and carry ‘em out if they smelled us coming.”
Rhynehart joined the tall goblin and peered into the first box before stepping away again, scratching his chin. “Yeah, they wouldn’t leave all this here for us to find. Not with their supplier behind bars.”
Cheyenne scanned the open room around them, sunlight filtering in through the wooden frames and casting flickering shadows across the plywood floors. A soft, warning buzz crawled across her shoulders. “Something’s wrong.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” The troll who’d helped keep her captive her first day at the FRoE compound tossed a hand toward the drow halfling and turned toward Rhynehart. “She’d better be more useful than that.”
“She’s not the problem, Bhandi,” Rhynehart said, running a gloved hand over his head. “Not when we’re all standing here with our dicks in our hands.”
“I mean, something else.” Cheyenne turned in a slow circle, scanning the floor and the boxes on the tables and the open frames of the rooms above them on the second floor. “Something’s still here.”
“Yeah, a fat load of zero assholes we were supposed to bring in.”
The halfling ignored the other agent’s irritated quip, biting her lower lip against the buzz along her shoulders quickly growing into a painful itch. Then she spotted a pile of brightly colored clothes on the far side of the open room and took off toward it. “Wait a minute.”
“Unless you found a trapdoor into a bunch of tunnels, rookie, I don’t think there’s anything worth our time in here.”
She turned back over her shoulder and pointed at the pile of clothes. “I’d say it’s worth our time to find out why whoever was in here last stripped off all their clothes and dumped them over here.”
“What?”
“Yeah, look at this.” When she reached the pile, it was a lot bigger than it looked from the other side of the room. What the hell
