Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“Let’s go,” Sylvie said.
My hand shot out and grabbed her arm. “Go where?”
“He left the door open, Eli. We’re not going to try to get in?”
I wanted to argue, but if Sylvie hadn’t been standing next to me, I would have already been over the fence. “I don’t suppose you’d get back in the car?”
“Not a chance.” She tugged her hood farther over her face and waited.
“All right, fine.” I pulled my own hood down tighter and rested my hand on the weapon at my side. “Do exactly as I say. If you get hurt, I’m going to fucking kill you, got it?”
She said simply, “I’m not an idiot.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed, but time was running out.
“Do you think there’s a silent alarm?” she asked quietly as we moved to the shadows at the side of the alley, approaching the fence from the same angle the intruder had left, hoping to find a gap in the chain-link.
“Could be,” I said. “Which is another reason you might want to stay in the car.”
“Too late,” she said.
We neared the corner where the intruder had disappeared and found the door—and the fence—hanging open.
“Well, that was easy,” I said under my breath.
Sylvie stayed tight to my side as we crossed the small parking lot and approached the open door to the building. If there was an alarm that had been triggered, it was indeed silent, because the building was dark, empty, and cold, with no signs of life aside from the hum of a furnace working sluggishly somewhere.
The side door led into a hall with linoleum floors and yellowed paint. At the end of the hall was a door—unlocked and open several inches. Beyond that: shelves and shelves and shelves of neatly labeled boxes.
“Fuck, we don’t have time for this,” I said.
“We can at least figure out where it might be. For whoever comes later,” Sylvie said.
“That’s the plan,” I agreed, and snapped pictures of the layout.
Emmett and Maddox had given me a case number for the evidence. I pulled it up on my phone and showed it to Sylvie. “This is what we’re looking for.” With that long string of numbers in our minds, the labels on the ends of the aisles made more sense. Moving quickly, we searched up and down, up and down.
“We need to split up,” she said.
“Sylvie, I’ve seen that movie. We’re not splitting up.”
“We’ll still be in sight of each other, Eli, but you go that way”—she pointed to another section of shelving—“I’ll finish this line. If we have the case number, we should be able to find it and get out of here in a few minutes.”
“Fine,” I agreed. If I’d been with anyone else on my team, it was the first thing we would have done. But this wasn’t Ryder or Shade. This was Sylvie. Even as the thoughts landed, I pushed them away. It didn’t matter. She was right—we had a job to do and limited time to do it. “You take those aisles, I’ll take these. Move fast.”
She did, and we went in two directions. I spent a second watching her slide down the aisle, head rising and lowering as she scanned numbers, and then I moved to do the same on the other side of the room.
Nothing, and more nothing. I was way off. The case numbers appeared to be in consecutive order. Ours started with a nine. These were threes. Not even close. I hoped Sylvie was having better luck as I scanned dark aisle after dark aisle, moving faster, looking for anything that started with a nine.
Another aisle over, and a flash at the end caught my eye. A red light, blinking. One blink a second. Fuck. That could be a lot of things. But the one I was most familiar with was bad news. I wanted to run, grab Sylvie, and get the hell out, but I had to know what we were dealing with. I sprinted down the aisle and skidded to a stop.
Yep, it was what I thought. Another fucking bomb. This guy—if that was our guy—had been so close. I kicked myself for not realizing that the coincidence of someone breaking into the exact cold storage location holding Emily Shaw’s stuff was no coincidence at all.
Didn’t matter. He was long gone now.
And the timer clicked down.
Fucking 45, 44, 43…
Not enough time. I’d disarmed bombs with less time than this, but with a trained team at my back. I couldn’t risk it now, not with Sylvie in the building. Not when the other option was to get the fuck out.
“Sylvie!” I shouted, no longer worried about surveillance. “Run! Now!” I was already sprinting down the aisle, shouting, “Sylvie, get the fuck out, there’s a bomb!”
“I found the box, Eli—” Her voice drifted through the dark, from too far away.