She still didn’t move.
“Pasco, I need thirty seconds.”
“Roger that,” he said, and my comms clicked off.
I took Cami’s hands and looked into her eyes. “Cami, I need your help to keep Bella safe.”
That snapped her out of her stupor. “Of course.”
“Take up her up to my bedroom and close yourself in with her. There’s small button under the right door handle. Push that to engage the deadbolt. Can you do that, can you keep her calm until I come to get you both?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’ll take care of her.” She called Bella and ran toward the stairs, then ran back to me. She grabbed my face between her hands and kissed me. “Don’t you dare get hurt, hero. We have unfinished business.”
Cami took off again with Bella trotting obediently behind her. When the pup glanced at me, I nodded, and Iwas sure she understood I was telling her I’d keep her safe. She followed Cami up the stairs.
I tapped my comms. “Pasco, Rogers here, back online.”
“Roger that,” Pasco said, then resumed coordinating communication between all the personnel now on the line.
I strapped on a bulletproof vest, slung a loaded rifle over each shoulder, and slid a pistol into my vest holster. The second the deadbolt on the bedroom door slid into place and I knew Cami and Bella were safe, my heart rate slowed down to a manageable speed. The adrenaline pouring into my system hyper-focused me on the task at hand, which was to pin down the intruders. I strapped on my helmet and bounded up the stairs two at a time.
In the upstairs hallway, behind the plastic separating the finished from the unfinished side of the house, I tugged on a barely visible cord. A metal ladder dropped from the ceiling and I scrambled up it, into the attic space. I snapped on infrared goggles and peered out through the slats of the ventilation system cover at the front of the house. “I have heat signatures on three hostiles,” I said into the comms. I slid open a small panel to my right and slid a rifle barrel through it.
“Rest of the property is clear,” Pasco, who was monitoring all my security feeds, said. “These idiots came alone.”
“Then they’re probably only here to send a message. And I have one for them. Permission to engage, boss.”
“No live ammunition,” Kat said. “Deadly force not authorized, I repeat, not authorized unless they breach the house.”
“Fuck me,” I muttered, but I already had my tranq rifle in my hand, not the live ammo one.
HEAT agents weren’t assassins, killers, or vigilantes. We saw our targets as potential witnesses, snitches, or futuredefendants. That suited me because I had no problem behaving like a civilian in a civilized society. If those fuckers entered my house with Cami and Bella in it, though, we’d be having a different conversation.
“I’m on the road,” I heard Hayes say as he joined the conversation.
“Same,” Wheeler chimed in.
“Both of you head straight to HQ,” Kat instructed. “Rogers and Lang, I’m six minutes out. Do not engage with law enforcement if they beat me there.”
“I’ll be there in three,” Lang announced. He must be breaking land-speed records.
“Police will arrive right behind you,” Pasco told him.
“By the time any of you get here, it’ll all be over but the crying,” I said.
One hostile had slid out of the SUV and crouched beside it while the other two waited inside it. I lined up the idiot in my sights. Did he really think the vehicle would protect him? I wasn’t as good a shot as a certified sharpshooter like Hayes’s sister Mai, but I kept up my skills. They sometimes came in handy for extractions. And now, apparently, for protecting my homestead.
I squeezed the trigger. The tranq dart hit the guy dead-on center mass. He fell backward. The asshole must have made a noise as he hit the ground, because inside the vehicle, his buddies were making frantic movements and one of them peered through the side window. He motioned to the third guy, who hesitated, then slid out of the passenger side door.
“That hesitation was your lizard brain trying to keep you alive, asshole,” I said. I lined him up in my sights and took him out the same way. Sadly, he was only unconscious. But he’d be in custody soon, HEAT custody, if therewas any justice in the world, his life would then change forever.
The last conscious guy was really frantic now, sliding from side to side on the back seat, looking out the windows at his buddies who, for all he knew, might be dead. He was probably shitting himself. I would have taken him out with a shot through the windshield, but if they were even a few IQ points smarter than they’d appeared to be up until now, that would be bullet-proof glass, and the tranq darts wouldn’t penetrate it.
He finally slid into the driver’s seat and began backing up the lane, leaving his fallen comrades behind. That took a special kind of asshole.
“There really is no honor among thieves,” I said. “Or drug runners, or whatever the hell they are. Lang, be aware, you’re barreling down on a moving SUV.”
“I’m on it,” Lang said.
