Iniquus sent its operators out in Humvees or other large tactical vehicles. One reason was that they were always on call for a fellow operator in trouble. That’s how Ridge and Zeus had made it to me so quickly when Destiny was murdered.
The second reason was that the vehicles were all equipped to handle the emergencies they were called to.
I went from vehicle to vehicle with my duffel. I filled it with sidearms with silencers, ammunition, bullet-resistant vests, smoke cylinders, flashbang, the breachers bag with explosives for entry no matter what the material was that kept our operators on the wrong side of their destination. And comms.
I dropped the magnetic audio units into my ear canals and put the camera glasses on my face.
“Testing. Testing. Lynx to Control.”
“Lynx, we have audiovisual. We are standing by.”
All those rifles.
All those Omega operators.
Would this keep my team safe? Or would it make them target practice?
Altogether this ruck weighed more than I could ever hope to carry. But my fear-adrenaline made me Atlas.
I hefted the pack onto my back and retraced my way to the window.
There, I had to acknowledge my limitations. I wasn’t climbing three stories with this pack pulling me backward.
After a moment’s thought, I secured the bag to my rope, climbed, shimmied through the window, then dragged the pack up the side.
Slowly. Slowly so as not to bang or scrape and call attention to my actions, I pulled and heaved. I pressed the worry thoughts, the danger scenarios from my mind.
Adrenaline had its purposes, but I had found over time that adrenaline can be a bitch. It certainly wasn’t always my friend. The biggest fears were that I would freeze, that it would destroy my fine motor capacity, or that I would be unable to think strategically.
My team was counting on me. I couldn’t let them down.
I couldn’t.
Chapter Forty-Two
Standing on a chair in the meeting room with the drywall square on the ground. I lowered equipment into the sink on the other side of the wall.
Getting back into the dressing room wasn’t a walk in the park.
As I tried to heft myself up, the wall crumbled in my hands and made way too much noise.
Stacking four chairs, I was able to scramble up high enough that I could thrust a leg through the hole.
My brain was pinging with all the ways everything could go to hell.
London Bridges falling down, falling down.
“Got it, already. I’m doing my best.” I grumbled under my breath, suddenly very afraid that my weight plus the weight of the equipment might just make the sink fall off the wall.
A new challenge, I tried to reframe the situation.
Spreading my legs out wide to anchor me, with the wall digging into my hips, so leaned through the opening, silently moving the equipment over to the dressing table before I made my reentry.
It all took time.
And time was a precious commodity.
Gathering the things into the pack again, I dragged it to the vent. There I took a moment to assess. It seemed that the long line of Assemblymen digitally handing over their wealth was still in progress.
“Here,” I exhaled.
Striker rubbed his hands over his face.
“I have a duffel,” I explained what I had gathered. “And a sketch of where I saw tangos and hostages.”
“Good. Chica, here’s the plan. The men will stand. The women will step through the vent. Lynx, it’s on you to get them out. And if you can’t get them out, you will get them to the safest possible place.”
At first, I didn’t like that plan. I wanted to crawl through the vent and help in the room. But as my initial knee-jerk reaction slid to the side, I could see the benefit of this strategy.
If the men were worried about their loves, their focus would be divided. The women would get in the way of their operating.
“Reaper has to come through, too,” I insisted. “I need his help, and he can’t be in the room with flashbang—his head.”
“Agreed.” Striker stood. “Ready when you are.”
Lula came through first.
One by one, the others followed: Kira, Grace, Suz, Faith, Kate. Finally, as requested, Reaper dove through. The only dad on our team, yeah, there were a bunch of reasons it had to be Reaper if I could only get one of the team free.
We moved on silent feet to the dressing room. Reaper was staring at the hole. “Good job,” he said. “I’ll go first.”
Again, I worried about the staying power of that sink. If it crashed to the ground, the noise would be huge. It would expose us. I snagged Reaper’s arm and showed him the problem. “Okay, you go first then,” he said. He placed a knee on the dressing table and extended his other leg to rest his foot on the shelving. “Stand on my thigh, not the sink.”
And so we did. In a train of long skirts and sequins, helping each other, keeping as quiet as possible, we struggled from one room to the next.
The next step seemed much more dangerous.
I was the only one with shadow walking skills. We would be exposed in the hallway.
Peeking, running, stopping, and hiding. Eventually, we made it to the stairs and up.
Reaper looked out the three-story window and assessed my rope with a whistle. He checked his watch. “Striker gave our exfil a fifteen-minute window.”
“You planned this before I got there. You all must think I have mad skills. I wasn’t at all sure I could come through.”
“But you did in spades. Our plan is on track. We need to get everyone down and into the trees. You’re wearing glasses. Iniquus is monitoring?”
“Yup. The Cavalry is on its way.”
“Moving,” Reaper said. “Ladies, here’s the deal. This
