I darted my eyes to the cabinet where we kept a fewloaded syringes to be used in case an animal reacted violently and we needed to calm him quickly. I looked at the cabinet again, then glanced down at my pocket.
It took a beat, but when she understood my silent communique, she raised her eyebrows and gave me a tiny nod. Our plan to stay alive was set.
36
KYLE
Six minutes after running from the building, I spotted Bella on the trail. As she barreled toward me, I saw a folded piece of paper stuck under her collar.
“A note!” I yelled. “She has a note.”
The rest of the team went quiet and waited for more information.
Bella screeched to a halt in front of me, her back end wagging wildly. “Good girl!” I told her. “Good, good girl!”
She leapt and yelped with delight. It took a few seconds to calm her enough to follow the sit command so I could detach the note. I unfolded it to see Cami’s handwriting. She’d been shaking when she’d written it. Scared. My anger and fear spiked. I forced myself to remain calm for her sake.
There were a series of words and letters. It made no sense. I took Deep breaths. Forced myself to be calm. Focused.
I read it out loud, deciphering it. “SR here. That’s no surprise.Explosive. Hostage. That explains the woman we saw.G D D C. I don’t know.”
Lang’s chopper engine hummed in the distance,drawing closer. I petted Bella’s back, then held her collar. “Easy, girl. It’s going to get noisy.”
Still staring at the note, I repeated the letters. “G D D C. Initials! Gina, Darla, Doc, Cami. The four of them are in the building.”
Lang stopped several feet away from us. Bella and I ran over to him. He held onto her while I unstrapped a helmet and bullet-proof vest from the bike and put them on, matching him. The gear was for protection in case Riker was stationed on the roof or aiming out a window, taking pot shots. Everything else we would need to breach the building and take him down would be in the HEAT van that would meet us at the scene.
I picked up Bella and held her to my chest with one arm, shielding her, while grabbing onto Lang’s shoulder with the other. Lang proceeded more slowly than he’d arrived, but it was still precarious as hell and I barely stayed on the bike a few times when we hit serious bumps. Bella squirmed, but she didn’t try to jump.
When we arrived at the edge of the woods, Lang parked the bike and we snuck around the perimeter. No sign of Riker yet, but we didn’t want him to announce himself with gunfire.
The black HEAT van rolled into the parking lot as we reached the tree cover near the front of the building. We made a run for it, happily not dodging bullets along the way. The van’s back doors swung open on our approach. I loaded in Bella first, and Wheeler snapped a leash on her and tied it to the leg of the mobile command center computer desk. Lang and I climbed in behind her, and took the holsters and weapons Hayes handed us and strapped them to our bodies.
Kat, Pasco, and Bond were also in the van, and they slid into the back with us while we prepped. Pasco, who hadn’ttaken his eyes or hands off his laptop, now set it on the desk and continued working. X was still at HQ, which was protocol. In the grand scheme of things, she was too important to risk on any one operation.
Within seconds, Pasco announced, “We’re close enough to the building. I’m re-engaging the security system. I’ll have to go camera by camera.”
Large monitors mounted to the van walls jumped to life. Room by room, the interior of the clinic appeared.
“Receptionist and hostage accounted for,” Lang said. “They’re sitting in the lobby. They appear to be zip-tied.”
“I’ve opened the cipher lock on the front door,” Pasco said, “but there’s also a deadbolt.” He pointed to a spot on the screen. “You can see it’s engaged.”
“We can breach it, no problem,” Wheeler said.
“Too noisy,” Lang and I said at the same time.
“The back door is unlocked,” Pasco said. “I can’t visually confirm whether there’s a barrier.”
“We’ll try going in that way,” Lang said. “Breaking down a door will be our last resort. Now we need to figure out where?—"
“There they are, Cami and Gina.” I pointed to the feed that had just popped up. They were in the OR, dressed for surgery. I sucked in my breath. “Riker’s with them. He has a handgun. Impossible to identify the make.”
“Can you make a positive ID on the women?” X asked. “Their faces are obscured.”
“I’d know Cami anywhere.” I didn’t care to elaborate. “And the height and stance of the other woman indicates it’s Gina.”
“The dog on the table is the one Riker ran with Saturday night,” Wheeler said. “At least we know he’s still alive.”
