“Hurry, but don’t hurry so much that you’re stupid,” he said.
“You forget what I do for a living?” I asked, pausing in annoyance with my pants half-buttoned.
“Didn’t forget, that’s why I called you,” he replied. “But I also know how different shit is when it’s someone you care about.”
“I’m good,” I lied. “I’ll text you when it’s done. Send that pin.”
“It’s already sent,” he said before hanging up.
I checked my messages and found the pin that Cam sent, cursing when I realized it would take forty minutes to get there. San Diego County was fucking huge and the traffic sucked.
Scrolling through my contacts, I found the number I was looking for and pressed send.
“Just cause you don’t sleep, doesn’t mean I don’t,” Forrest answered groggily.
“Need your help,” I replied grimly.
His voice was immediately alert when he spoke again. “Talk to me.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, I’d reached out to each member of my team and Forrest was knocking on my front door.
“Josiah and Ephraim just pulled up behind me,” he said as he strode in the front door.
“Wilson and Eli should be here shortly,” I replied as I repacked the duffle bag on my kitchen table. “Lu said she was going to run over, should be walking in—”
I didn’t finish my sentence before the only woman on our team, Lu, was opening the sliding glass door that led to my back yard.
“Decided to just jump the fences,” she said, swinging her backpack off her shoulder. “Boys almost here?”
“Yep,” Forrest confirmed.
Within minutes, our entire team was crowded around my kitchen table, a seven-person unit that worked like a well-oiled machine.
“I don’t know much,” I said as I looked around the group. “Old friend called me tonight and said that his daughter is in trouble. She heard gunshots and hid in a closet of some house in La Jolla. Fair warning, I have no fucking clue what we’re walking into.”
“How old is this daughter?” Wilson asked.
“My age,” I replied, meeting his eyes.
“And you know her in the biblical sense?” he asked, his head tilting a little to the side. He must have read something in my tone or body language, but I couldn’t take the time to figure out what my tell had been.
“When we were teenagers,” I said with a short nod.
“I’m takin’ point,” Forrest said firmly.
I opened my mouth to argue then closed it again. He was right. It galled me to realize that I was too close to the situation to be objective.
“Vests, paint, and night vision,” Eli ordered. “Masks at the ready for when we get close enough for the cameras.”
“You know for sure if they have eyes?” Siah asked.
“It’s a house in La Jolla,” Eli replied. “They’ve definitely got cameras. We’ll avoid them if we can, but if we miss one, I don’t want any of our mugs on the six o’clock news.”
We geared up and climbed into Forrest’s black SUV and Ephraim’s Jeep. As soon as I was sitting, anxiety hit me so hard and fast that my knee started to bounce up and down. I didn’t even recognize the emotion for a second, because it had been so long since I’d felt it. I got nervous, sure. I felt fear. You didn’t put yourself into high risk situations and never feel those things—those instincts kept you alive. But I hadn’t felt this pure, helpless fear in years, not since I was seventeen years old, beat to shit, and laying on my back in the shade of an old white house while gunfire erupted all around me.
“You good?” Lu asked, reaching forward from the back seat to pat my shoulders.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Hate not knowing what we’re walking into.”
“We’re in the US of A,” she said, slapping me once more on my shoulder. “This is gonna be a piece of cake compared to anywhere we’ve been overseas.”
“Gonna be nice drivin’ away without havin’ to watch for shit in the road,” Forrest said, thumping his hand against the steering wheel.
“Exactly,” Lu said, leaning back in her seat with a sigh. “No IED’s, no ambushes, just a quick snatch and grab and then we’re gone. Poof.”
I didn’t vocalize the crap swirling around in my head. I knew they were trying to downplay it all, even if they were telling the truth, but that didn’t mean shit, not really. Because if we didn’t reach her in time, I wouldn’t give a fuck how easy it was to get out of there. My only concern was getting to her, making sure she was safe, and extracting her from the house. Getting away clean was the least of my worries.
It took less time than I’d planned for to get to the end of the long, gated driveway, which was a plus, but the gate was locked up tight, which meant we were going to have to get to the house on foot. We drove a quarter of a mile past the gate and spun around before parking further down the hill on the side of the road. Thankfully, both the rigs were dark, because parked cars were definitely out of the ordinary on that stretch of road. They’d be noticed, but hopefully, the color would make it harder for any other drivers to remember them later.
“We’ll hop the fence down here,” Forrest said. “Looks like the owners like trees, thank fuck, so we should have some cover until we get closer to the house. Assume that there’s an alarm system and move forward accordingly.”
“Got it,” Wilson said. “Should take me about forty seconds to disable it once I’m within ten feet of the house.”
“Me, Eli and Lu will stick to the front with Wilson,” Forrest said. “Eph, Siah and Chief around the back. Don’t breach until you get my say-so.” He locked eyes with me. “Everyone’s comms working?”
“Yep.”
“Yep.”
“Mine’s good.”
“Ay-oh.”
“Yep.”
“All good,” I replied with a nod.
“Let’s—” Forrest paused. “Christ. What’s her name, man? We show up in there, we’re going to scare the hell out of her.”
“Cecilia,” I replied. I shook my head. Fuck, I needed to get my shit together. “And she’s armed.”
Eli jerked his head forward in surprise and widened his eyes at me. “Probably a good thing to know,” he spat.
“And this is why I took point,” Forrest muttered. “Try not to get yourselves shot.”
I didn’t bother to apologize, because I already looked like a fucking moron. Jesus Christ, I was always on top of my shit. We had to grab a couple of preschoolers out of a house somewhere on the other side of the world? I was the one who had candy in my pocket for the inevitable freak out. Stuck inside a busted-up school with no conceivable way out? Hey, I’d packed fucking water for this eventuality, it looked like we wouldn’t die of dehydration before we could get extracted. You’re welcome.
“Cecilia,” Wilson mused over the comm. “Now, where have I seen that name before?”
Lu chuckled.
“Was it a tattoo, maybe?” Ephraim joked. “I swear I’ve seen a bad tattoo of that name.”