“Not sure, but Cory will tell us,” Kevin said, unconcerned about anything other than shooting the large weapon he’d just helped set up.
“Sierra!” Adam yelled once more.
Bending, she picked up another box of ammo and went down the hall to where Adam was pretending he was in a video game. Without a word, she dropped the box at his feet, then turned and left. She heard Adam bitching about the bullets spilling out, but Sierra didn’t care. She hadn’t lied to Tweedledee and Tweedledum in the other room. She didn’t have a good feeling about what would happen after Cory shot off that RPG.
She could hear someone yelling through a megaphone, trying to get someone to talk to them, to negotiate. But no one seemed inclined to answer. And if Cory didn’t want to negotiate, that meant he probably didn’t care if he lived or died. Or if those he brought with him did either.
Sierra supposed some people watching this mess might think exactly what Cory wanted them to. They might agree that the government and military had overreacted. They wouldn’t care that the men and women outside were goaded into whatever they might do.
Standing uncertainly in the middle of the hallway, Sierra was out of ideas. She’d done what she could to help Grover, then spread uncertainty among some of the idiots blindly following Cory. Now all she wanted to do was run. But she’d gotten herself into this situation, and there was no running from it.
Kevin exited the room Cory was in and called down the hallway for everyone to hear. “Five-minute warning!”
The others upstairs at the windows let out shouts of acknowledgement, and she heard the men who were still downstairs do the same.
Kevin met her gaze and grinned. “Ready for the fireworks? It’s gonna be off the hook.”
“Cool,” Sierra managed to say. Luckily, Kevin was too excited to notice her lukewarm reaction.
Sierra strongly reconsidered finding one of Grover’s hidden guns and stopping Cory from doing what would surely incite the officers and soldiers outside to retaliate. But the same obstacles remained. She didn’t know how to use any of the guns, and any hesitation could get her killed.
All she could do was hope that Grover had been able to use his secret phone, and weapons, and was even now on his way out of the prison cell she herself had suggested they put him in.
Sierra moved to the end of the hall and pressed her back into a corner, doing what Grover had ordered in those caves in Afghanistan. She slid down the wall until her ass hit the floor. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she did her best to make herself as small as possible.
While nowhere in the house was safe at the moment, at least she was away from the windows. She had no doubt that bullets would start flying the second Cory aimed that damn rocket-propelled grenade.
For a moment, it felt as if she was back in Afghanistan. Trapped. Waiting for her fate to once again be decided by others. Except this time, she’d willingly made herself a hostage.
Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead on her knees and prayed.
The second he’d been left alone in his media room, Grover had gotten to work. Brody had shot the lights out, as ordered, but Grover didn’t need them. He knew where he’d stashed every weapon in this room. His thoughts briefly turned to Sierra, but if he concentrated too hard on what she might be going through, he wouldn’t be able to function.
He started with the reclining seats.
It took some maneuvering, but he was able to remove one of the knives he’d hidden in a compartment under one of the chairs and cut the second set of zip-ties Brody had put on him. Grover could feel blood on his skin from where he’d cut himself, and where Brody had sliced him earlier, but he didn’t even feel any pain. He was too focused. Within a minute, he’d removed the phone from its hiding place behind the decorative flag on the wall and was talking to Trigger.
His team leader had asked for some time.
Grover’s first inclination was to burst out of this fucking room and take out whoever dared stand between him and the woman he loved. But he trusted Trigger, and his team leader needed to make sure everyone was aware that Cory had an RPG and was planning to use it.
He’d designed the damn media room to be practically soundproof, and Grover regretted that now. He couldn’t hear what was going out outside, or even inside his damn house. To keep himself busy, he collected as many weapons as he could comfortably hold. He holstered a pistol on his thigh and another at the small of his back, strapped a knife onto his calf and another at his waist, then grabbed a rifle as well.
He didn’t want to kill anyone…
Yeah, that was a lie. He wanted to take Cory down, and if any of the other stupid punks had hurt Sierra, he’d take them out too.
After arming himself, Grover paced the room.
What seemed like an hour later, but was in actuality closer to the fifteen minutes Trigger asked for, the phone vibrated in Grover’s hand.
“Talk to me.”
“Looks like Cory’s about to make his move,” Trigger said, and Grover could hear him breathing hard, as if he was moving while talking. “I’ve informed everyone as to what the hell is going on, and they’ve agreed not to bring the house down. They’re going to make a lot of noise though,” Trigger warned.
“Sierra could be hit if they fire into my house!” Grover growled.
“Everyone’s been instructed to fire high and low, not right at the windows.”
Grover wasn’t exactly happy with that, but he also knew it was the best he was going to get at the moment.
“They’ll keep them occupied as we come in from the west, and Ghost and his crew come in from the east. The garage is a weak spot. From what we can tell, they don’t have eyes on it.”
“They put shit up against the back door,” Grover warned.
“Yeah, we saw. It won’t slow any of Ghost’s crew down. Be ready, Grover. Two minutes and we’re in. We’re coming in quiet rather than balls to the wall.”
“Ten-four.”
“See you soon. This’ll be over in five. Over and out.”
Grover slid the phone into his back pocket and headed for the door. Cory and Brody had barricaded the door of the media room with several chairs from his living room, but they were no match for Grover. A few hard, quiet shoves and he was entering his hallway.
He paused to listen, hearing nothing but the sound of someone on a megaphone outside, attempting to get Cory to talk. Grover felt his heartbeat slow as he regulated his breathing and crept down the hallway toward his living area, completely focused on the task at hand.
An extremely loud whooshing sound startled him—followed by a massive explosion that literally rocked the house on its foundation.
He heard someone shout with excitement in the front room. Glass shattered somewhere, probably from the blast wave of the RPG exploding, as it hit whatever Cory had aimed at.
Then the air filled with the sound of gunshots.
It sounded like Grover was in the middle of World War Three. There was no need to be quiet anymore, as no one in the house would be able to hear anything but the report of dozens of guns.
More shouts came from upstairs, men yelling that people were coming toward the house from the backyard.
It sounded like the Strong Foot Militia was panicking.
Good. It would make things easier for him and his team.