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As the guard passed by the side of the house and paused, a shadow rose up and wrapped around him. Hollis jerked his gun up at the thick shadow, his heart lurching in his chest for a second before he realized that he was looking at Rowe. In a flash, Rowe snaked one arm around the man’s neck from behind while pressing his other hand to the top of the man’s head. The guard took a couple of stumbling steps backward as Rowe pulled him back, cutting off both his airway and the blood flowing to his brain. Hollis slowly counted to three and then Rowe was laying the unconscious man on the ground. The only sound that had been made was a soft scrape of the man’s heel across the dirt.
Rowe waved Hollis over as he knelt beside the body. With his gun still drawn, Hollis hurried from his hiding spot, keeping low and moving as silently as possible. He crouched in the dirt across from Rowe, a sharp rock digging into his knee but he ignored it as he watched Rowe pull the walkie-talkie from the guard and turn it off before tucking it into his own back pocket. He then pulled off both handguns as well as the two knives he found on the man.
“Tape,” Rowe whispered.
Hollis dropped the small sling bag he carried to the ground and pulled out one of the rolls of duct tape that had been tucked inside. They’d stashed their larger packs outside the abandoned town. The size and weight would have kept them from moving swiftly and silently. Both he and Ian had been given smaller bags filled with a few basic supplies such as zip ties, duct tape, and extra ammo.
Rowe stopped when he got the roll and held it up toward the sky as if trying to see it more clearly in the thin moonlight. There was some kind of design on the tape rather than just the normal silver gray.
“Son of a bitch,” Rowe said in a harsh whisper.
“What?”
“He gave me the goddamn unicorns!” Rowe growled. He pulled off the first short strip and cut it with his teeth before placing it over the unconscious man’s mouth.
Hollis sucked in an unsteady breath and pointed his gun at Rowe. “You two are seriously messed up.”
Even in the low light, Hollis could make out Rowe’s fake wounded look. “But he promised me the roll with the Minions on it.”
Hollis shook his head and shoved his gun into the holster in the middle of his back before helping flip the man onto his stomach. He pulled the man’s hands together behind him and held them while Rowe quickly wrapped the wrists in tape. They repeated the process with his ankles before hog-tying him. The whole action took no more than a minute, but that would have been more than enough time for the second guard to come around the corner of the house.
Holding his breath, Hollis looked up, waiting for several painful heartbeats for the second guard to appear, but he never did. Noah and Ian had taken him out, most likely, like Rowe had taken this man down. And they’d done it without making a sound.
“There,” Rowe directed with a jerk of his head toward a thick set of bushes near the back of the house out of the view of any of the windows. From a distance, it looked like they’d all been covered over with plywood, but Hollis knew better. The occupants of the schoolhouse likely had holes cut through the wood to allow them to see, as well as stick the muzzle of a gun through.
“How long do we wait?” Hollis asked as they further taped the unconscious man’s arms and legs to the thick branches of the bush. He was going to be a bitch to cut loose, but Hollis was really hoping that it wasn’t going to be their problem.
“We don’t,” Rowe said. “We’re running five seconds behind.”
Hollis didn’t ask how Rowe possibly knew they were running behind. The man never looked at a watch or a phone for the time. He just knew, and Hollis wasn’t going to question it. As soon as Noah and Ian finished subduing their assigned guard, they were going to sneak into the building from the doorway at the rear. Hollis and Rowe were supposed to be entering at the same time from the front. They had no idea how many guards were waiting for them on the inside and they had only a rough idea of the layout of the schoolhouse from Ian. From here, things got fucking tricky.
Clenching his teeth against the wind stirring to life as they broke cover to the front stairs, Hollis followed closely behind Rowe, keeping his body bent low. He took quick rolling steps to minimize noise though no one else was outside to hear them, or so they believed. No one had been spotted patrolling the perimeter, but both Rowe and Noah had said that patrols that far from the schoolhouse would be unlikely since it was too hard to see in that much brush and thick shadow. Hollis prayed they were right and it was his nerves causing the itching sensation between his shoulder blades. He didn’t like not having Ian directly in front of him. He wanted to be able to reach out and touch him, reassure himself that the man was safe, have him close so he could shield him with his own body if necessary.
