“You were staying with her at her house?”
Before Cecily could respond there was a deafening BOOM! The sound of an explosion rocked the hotel suite shaking the room as if they had been in an earthquake. Glass vases fell off the tables, pillows came off couches, and anything that wasn’t nailed down hit the floor. A loud alarm sounded. The quaking and vibrations only lasted for a few seconds, but that was long enough.
Cecily screamed as men with guns appeared from nowhere. Yelling over all the noise and commotion, she got up on wobbly legs from the couch and put her hands over her ears. “What’s going on!?”
Nina stood on shaky legs too. “I’ll bet you anything your aunt is here. It seems she’s come to get you.”
Chapter 21
Gina Lee-Xiou
Brody and I rode over to the hotel in a black van with darkened windows as an identical one followed. Both vehicles were filled with our security. Jamal and Hahn made sure we were all in sync before arriving on the scene.
Neither Brody nor I were willing to give an inch. Both of us sat in silence on opposite ends of the van lost in our own thoughts.
I was wrong. No doubt about it. The clicking sounds of guns reinforced the reality of my situation. People were going to die. This was my life. Granted, I didn’t usually tag along for these types of jobs, but there was no way I was staying behind not with Cecily in the cross fire. Still, I knew how to handle a gun.
What did Brody mean about how he met Jamal? Jamal was a former US Special OPS. So much had happened so quickly between us that I never really had Brody investigated. As much as I hated to admit it, I just automatically trusted Braylee Hinsdale’s judgment.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Who had time to think about relationship woes? I needed to get it together and focus. Romance was the last thing that should have been on my mind. No matter what I might feel for Brody, my life wasn’t normal enough to handle being in a relationship.
It wasn’t my plan for things to happen like this, but Cecily forced my hand. Whatever strategy I was going to employ went up in smoke. But, by the end of the night, only one Lee-Xiou sister would probably be left standing.
Nina booked the entire fourteenth floor. Getting to her without anyone being hurt was going to be near impossible. Honestly, that wasn’t my priority. Getting Cecily safely away from Nina was. I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d gotten Brody mixed up in all of this. He had no business being here. Being a gentleman was going to get him killed. The likelihood that everyone in this van was going to come out unscathed was very low. People were going to get hurt, or worse, but I needed Brody to be okay.
Hahn addressed everyone. “Okay, ETA six minutes. One last reminder of how this is going to work.” All eyes were glued on him. “The four of us will enter the hotel via the front door. Gina, me, and Solo are going to head straight for the elevators. Pier, you will go to the back through the kitchens. Everyone else will enter the premises through that entrance. We know Nina is holed up on the fourteenth floor—room 1405. Solo . . .”
“Yeah?” He responded.
“You got the electrical device to scramble the security feeds and the digital decoder to get us up to the fourteenth?”
He held up a bag. “Got them right here.”
“Good. Pier and everyone else will take the service stairs not the elevator. It doesn’t need a code to access Nina’s floor.”
The plan had been hatched without me, and I had a question. “Why don’t we all take the service stairs?”
“We need to jam the elevators, and that can only be done from being inside one of them.”
I nodded my understanding. “Got it.”
“Good. Once team two clears the kitchen, Jamal is going to blow it. This will cause a necessary distraction. Hopefully, it’ll take a few minutes for Nina’s team to get their heads around what’s going on. That’ll be our one chance to surprise them.”
Two of us will remain in each stairwell, the rest will be on high alert. Since Nina has the entire floor, that means some of her guys will be coming out of their rooms. We’ll pick them off one by one while they are in a state of confusion. This all has to take place in less than fifteen minutes before the authorities show up.
Someone yelled out. “When does the time start?”
“As soon as we enter the building. Any more questions?”
“One change.” Brody hadn’t said a word up until now. “I’m going in with you and Gina.”
My head snapped to his. “I don’t need your protection, Brody.”
“Whether you need it or not, you’re getting it.”
Hahn and Brody exchanged some man-code, eye contact thing as if his words had been understood and were now law. Did Hahn forget who the hell wrote his checks?
I looked back and forth between the two of them. At no point did Brody look at me. He turned his gaze away and towards the window.
*****
Like clockwork, six minutes later, we arrived in front of the Shangri-La Hotel. Hahn, Brody, Solo, Pier and I exited the vehicle and entered the building one by one, while the vans
