they couldn’t afford.
After everyone donned their comm gear, Pat Solomon took point and led them through the forest with Michael right behind him, pointing out the trail indicators. When they were within one hundred yards of the fence, they stopped and gathered in a tight circle.
Pax pulled an iPad out of his bag, and opened one of the custom applications that had been developed at the Ranch. He had explained to Ash on the flight out that he should be able to tap into the Bluff’s security cameras once they were close enough.
Now his finger moved quickly over the screen, touching different points. Suddenly he froze.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
“What?” Michael asked, panic threatening to overtake him again.
“Two down in the front room. Another in the kitchen.” Pax started tapping the screen again.
“What about Janice? Can you check our room?”
“There’s no camera in there. You know that.”
“There’s one in the hall,” Michael said, moving around so he could see the screen, too. “If the door’s open, you should be able to see part of the way in.”
Pax frowned, and tapped the screen. “This one?”
“No. The next one down.”
Another tap.
“Yes. That’s it,” Michael said. He leaned in. “What is that…?”
Pax seemed to hesitate. “A leg. Looks male, though.”
“Oh, God.”
Even in the darkness, Ash could see Michael pale.
“Doesn’t mean she’s in there,” Pax said. “The only way we’re going to know is to check.”
He looked back at the screen, accessed a few more cameras, and sucked in a quick breath.
“What is it?” Ash asked.
Pax turned the tablet so they could all see.
On the screen was a view of the detention level deep below the house. The angle was from above the elevator door toward the Plexiglas wall that separated the arrival area from the detention block. Remnants of smoke hung in the air on the arrival side, and on the ground close to the elevators, obscured but not hidden by the smoke, was a body. There was no way to tell for sure if the person was dead or alive, but based on the five bloody figures sprawled on the ground on the other side of the see-through partition, it was a fair guess that no one in either half would ever take a breath again.
Pax switched to a view of the control room-bodies slumped over terminals, unmoving, with another two or three on the floor.
“We need to treat this as a poisonous gas situation,” Pax said.
“But the guards in the detention block look like they were shot,” Ash pointed out.
Pax grimaced. “Yeah. That bothers me, but I didn’t see any blood in the control room, and with that smoke, we’ve got to assume the worst.”
One of the men Ash hadn’t met until that night pulled his backpack off, and zipped it all the way open. Inside were enough gas masks for everyone, plus a few extras in case they found survivors. He passed them out.
“No one makes a move onto the detention floor until we run a check,” Pax said. “I want to know what we’re walking into first.”
There was a chorus of “Yes, sir”s.
“Any signs of who did this?” Ash asked.
Pax shook his head. “Checked cameras throughout the house and all the way to the front gate and back. Nothing. But we should proceed as if they’re still there. They have to know we’d come, so they could be waiting for us.”
More nods.
Pax pointed at four of the men. “Do a sweep all the way up to the front gate and back. We’ll wait at alpha position until you return.”
“Yes, sir.”
The men immediately headed out. Pax took a moment to report in to Matt at the Ranch, then he and the rest continued on toward the house.
Alpha position turned out to be a dense cluster of trees about a hundred and fifty yards from the house. Ash could sense Michael’s growing anxiety as they hunkered down and waited for the others to return. Each minute would be an eternity to him. Ash had been in that position himself once, and he knew there was nothing any of them could do to lessen the stress.
Finally, the others reappeared.
“Seven bodies,” one of the men reported. “All ours. Three back near the side fence. The other four near the front gate. No one else around.”
Pax closed his eyes a moment, his worst fears no doubt realized.
“All right,” he said. “You four cut through the woods and come at the house from the other side. Browne, Solomon, Ash, and I will close in from this side.”
“What about me?” Michael said.
“You stay here with Billy.”
“No way.”
“You
Michael took several quick breaths. “She’s my wife, Pax.”
“Exactly why you’re staying here. You’re too wound up and you know it. You make a mistake in there and you could get the rest of us killed. So what’ll it be?”
He stared at Michael.
“I’ll…I’ll wait here.”
“Good.” Pax looked over at Billy. “Shoot him if he tries to leave.”
The doctor nodded. “You got it.”
Hippocratic oath or not, Ash knew he would do it.
The two teams headed out in different directions. Ash and his group caught sight of the building in less than a minute. Despite the fact that lights were on in many of the rooms, there was a definite stillness blanketing the entire site.
Pax led them to within fifty feet of the porch then stopped. The front door was open, but there were no signs of movement inside.
“In position,” one of the men on the other team reported over the comm.
“All right. We’re moving in. You cover us,” Pax said.
Staying low, Pax, Ash, Browne, and Solomon rushed the porch, their guns raised in front of them. Browne and Solomon passed through the door first, each pointing their weapon in a different direction.
“Clear,” Browne announced.
“Clear,” Solomon echoed.
Pax and Ash moved in.
The two men lying in the front room had multiple gunshot wounds, including one each to the back of their heads.
Pax said nothing, but the anger in his face was more than telling.
“Up or down?” Browne asked.
“The house first, then we’ll go down,” Pax ordered.
A sweep of the first floor revealed no one else, so they called in the other four men before heading upstairs, where they split up. Pax and Ash were the first to arrive outside Michael and Janice’s room. The body they’d seen earlier on the floor inside was another one of the guards. They checked the closet and the en suite bath, but both were empty.
“Where the hell is she?” Ash asked.
Pax shook his head, just as confused.
They returned to the first floor and met up with the others. Since there was no sign of anyone else, Pax sent
