Gunner exhaled and double-tapped two shots into the back of his first target’s head, then shifted quickly to his second target. The guy had rolled onto his side to look behind himself, and Gunner sent two rounds into his neck above where body armor would end.
It was quick and brutal. But then, that was a nature of the job. He raced forward to check his kills while Spencer and Dray did the same. And then they were off, sliding toward the south end of the estate in search of the next team trying to capture or kill Poppy.
They’d been moving forward quickly for perhaps three minutes when Gunner’s earpiece came to life, startling him. Once they’d engaged the enemy, SEALs rarely spoke at all. They relied on hand signals and their superb training to know what to do next and what their teammates would be doing.
Except it wasn’t Spencer talking in his ear. It was Chas, talking on the secondary frequency in the headset Gunner had given him.
Chas asked low, “Gunner, did you guys just come back to the house?”
He clicked the radio twice. He’d taught Chas yesterday: one click for affirmative, two clicks for negative.
Chas whispered urgently, “Oh God. Then there’s someone in the house.”
Gunner’s entire being exploded with tension. He reached up and touched his throat, transmitting back a single word. “Hide.”
Spencer whipped his head around to glare at him as he broke operational silence.
There was no help for it. Gunner murmured, “Chas says there’s someone in the house with him.”
Spencer hesitated for no more than a millisecond. “Go.”
Gunner nodded and spun, taking off running at full speed, silence be damned. Chas was in mortal danger.
Chapter Twenty
CHAS LOOKED frantically around the bedroom. Where to go? They’d talked about it last night. Think. What had Spencer told him about where to hide? His panic was so bad, he couldn’t remember anything past the overwhelming urge to run and keep on running.
Laundry chute. There was an old laundry chute in the house that Spencer thought was big enough for him to climb inside, but Drago had been against him using it. He’d said it trapped Chas and gave him nowhere to run. Something about shooting fish in a barrel.
Think.
It sounded like the person or people had come in the kitchen door. He’d heard the distinctive squeak of the old hinges perhaps thirty seconds ago. Since then he’d heard nothing. They could already be upstairs. He raced over to the door on bare feet and locked it. Not that the old-fashioned lock would slow the bad guys down for more than a second or two.
He turned to face the room. Closet? Too obvious. Under the bed? Same. Behind the curtains? He’d be visible. Could he squeeze under the dresser? Probably not.
Out of options, he ran over to the window and heaved the old wooden sash open as he looked outside. It was a solid twenty-foot drop to the ground. Knowing him, he’d break his leg if he tried to jump down there, and then the bad guys would find him and kill him anyway. He glanced left and right and spied a rain gutter overhead. He probably shouldn’t try to hang from that. They weren’t usually attached that firmly and were made of flimsy aluminum. But it gave him an idea.
He punched out the screen and winced as it hit the ground with a faint metallic clang. Quickly, he climbed up onto the windowsill, sitting first and then reaching up to grip the top of the window frame. It was precarious as hell, but he managed to gain his feet standing on the open sill and reaching up to grip the rain gutter for balance. Carefully, he slipped his fingers behind the rain gutter, which was in fact quite loose, to grip the edge of the roof itself.
Using his right foot, he reached up and caught the edge of the open window with his toes and stepped down on it. Fortunately, the window was in good repair and slid shut until it rested on top of his left foot. That was as closed as he was going to get the thing. Hopefully, it would disguise his mode of exit from the house from a fast search by a bad guy.
From inside the house, he heard movement. A stair tread squeaked.
Oh God. No time to go slow.
He eased to his right until his left foot stood on the very last bit of the exterior sill, his fingers gripped the edge of the roof, and his right foot braced against a downspout at the corner of the house.
If he could just extend his right foot around the corner, he should catch the edge of the front porch roof….
It was right at the limit of his ability to stretch his body, and adrenaline probably gave him the last few centimeters he needed, but the toes of his right foot touched solid horizontal wood.
Okay. He was spread out against the wall, his body forming an awkward X. He might or might not have the foot strength to hold his body weight in this position long enough to move his hands farther to the right along the roofline.
A tremendous crash on the other side of the wall decided for him. The bad guys had just kicked in the door to his bedroom. Any second they would come over to the window and look out. He had to be off this wall by then!
Straining with every muscle fiber in in his body, he pushed his feet against the edge of the porch and the edge of the windowsill. Then, moving carefully, frantically, he edged his fingers to the right, one hand at a time. Right, left. Right, left.
His toes could no longer maintain contact with the windowsill, and his left leg swung down alarmingly, nearly pulling his left hand off the roof.
His left hand cramped with the effort of hanging on. His fingers slipped a few millimeters, and it felt as if all the skin was being scraped off his fingertips by the rough asphalt roofing. Grimly ignoring the burning pain, he pulled with all his strength on his left hand and inched his right hand to the right.
Reversing the process urgently, he pulled with all his strength on his right hand and lurched his left hand to the right. Oh God. It felt like his left hand was on fire. He thought he felt blood begin to drip down his left wrist.
He repeated the procedure one more time, and the entire ball of his right foot was abruptly able to plant on the sloping porch roof. He pushed hard on the foot, taking weight off his arms and giving them a much-needed rest.
He only allowed himself a few seconds, though. He had to get around the corner before the bad guys got done searching the bedroom.
He heard a shout from inside the house and a grunted reply in a language he didn’t understand. Spurred on by the bad guys feeling bold enough to yell back and forth, he inched his hands the last few feet along the roof until he was able to crouch on the front porch roof, breathing so hard his chest hurt. He lay down flat on the surface and commenced low-crawling across it.
A big old crepe myrtle’s branches overhung the other corner of the porch, providing decent cover from anyone who might glance up here.
The wood beneath him gave a loud creak and he winced, speeding up his frantic crawl toward a hiding spot.
At last. He huddled in the fine branches of the crepe myrtle, praying they hid him. Enough leaves blessedly clung to the branches to provide reasonably thick shadows beneath the overhanging boughs.
He looked down over the edge of the roof. He could jump down from here, but there was precious little cover in the yard. He would have to run for the trees and make it to the woods unseen, and then he would have to play commando with whoever was inside the house. He was barefoot and had no coat. Not to mention, he had no weapon and no fancy heat-seeking night vision gear.