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Mira felt her blade in her hand before she even realized she'd drawn it from its hidden sheath at her back. Her battle senses clashed with the need to know that Ackmeyer was all right inside. "Jeremy? If you're in there, you need to let me see you."
A loud, heavy thump answered. Then a thundering rush of boots on a stairwell. How many, she couldn't be sure. There were hushed voices, followed by a pained and muffled shout, cut off too abruptly for Mira's peace of mind.
Holy shit.
She flexed her fingers around the hilt of her dagger as she crept along the perimeter of the house, gauging the situation to determine her best course of action as one person against an unknown number inside.
Mira was good with her knives and hand-to-hand combat, but now she wished like hell she had ignored Ackmeyer's stated abhorrence of weapons and violence of any kind. She'd kept her daggers concealed on her person, but to avoid upsetting him, she'd hidden her gun in the glove compartment of the car. Damn it. She sped back down the knoll and yanked open the passenger-side door of the idling vehicle.
No sooner had she torn the big 9-mm out of its holster and thrown the safety than the left bay of the garage lifted and an unmarked black delivery van barreled out and past her like a bullet.
The van narrowly missed her, tires screaming on the pavement, smoke curling up in its wake as it roared up the drive. Mira rolled into a crouch and opened fire on the retreating vehicle.
She shot out one of its rear tires, continuing to blast rounds at the van as it swerved crazily, slowed by the damage. She fired until she had exhausted the magazine, then dived into the open passenger door of her car and leapt across the seats to the driver's side. Shifting hard into reverse, she stomped on the gas and swung around into a forward-facing spin.
Eyes on the limping van ahead of her, she slammed the car into drive and ground the pedal to the floor. Rather than ram it from behind and risk disabling her own vehicle, Mira roared up alongside the van and used her car to corral her quarry, steering it away from the paved driveway and onto the rough yard where it would be more difficult for the blown tire to roll. Given little choice, the van began to slow. It struggled on the uneven terrain, angling off to the right with Mira riding its side perpendicularly, holding fast to her course.
She waited to be met with a hail of gunfire from the van's occupants, but the driver, a young female with long black hair, and the hard-eyed blond man riding shotgun seemed more interested in evading Mira than shooting her dead. But the man was agitated, flailing his hands across the seat and shouting orders at the driver. She kept her cool, maneuvering as though she thought she might steer out of Mira's trap eventually, but her partner had no such patience. He lunged for the wheel, crawling over the driver and shoving her aside to take the seat himself.
He swerved crazily, then jerked hard to the left to scrape the side of the van into Mira's sedan. She dug deeper, foot to the floor on the gas, arms shaking with the effort to hold the wheel steady against the opposing force of the van. When the driver suddenly hit his brakes, Mira realized her mistake. Too late to stop her forward momentum, she ended up in front of the van.
Not even a second later, he rammed her from behind.
The hit was off center, smashing the rear right side of her car. Her body flew sideways with the impact, slamming her shoulder and head into the driver's-side door and window. Light exploded inside her skull. She smelled blood, felt warm, wet heat spread over her scalp and down the left side of her face.
Her vision was fading, filling fast with a thick black fog as the sedan lurched into a vicious spin. Everything slowed . . . then stopped.
Voices coming closer now.
She didn't know how many. Couldn't reconcile where they'd come from, until she lifted her head and glimpsed the black van. All of her senses were blanketed in a heavy gauze, sight and sound a confusion of input that her brain struggled to process. She tried to move, but her limbs refused the weak command.
"Come on, Brady. We don't have time for this." A man's voice, clipped and anxious on his approach. "We gotta roll now!"
"You heard Bowman's orders on this job." The reply was female. "No casualties, Vince. Secure the target and get out. That was the plan."
"And we've got Ackmeyer, so mission accomplished. Now let's get the fuck outta here."
"I'm not going anywhere until I make sure she's okay." A long-legged gait rushed toward Mira's slump in the car. The driver's-side door groaned open. "Jesus. Oh, shit . . . go get Doc. I need him out here on the double."
"She dying?"
"You better pray like hell she's not." A terse answer. "Go get Doc, right now."
Through the thick fog swamping Mira's senses, she felt the air stir as the man crept closer. Heard his sudden indrawn breath as he leaned over his comrade to get a better look. "Holy hell. This bitch is one of the Ord - "
"I know who she is," snapped the woman. "Go back to the van and get Doc. And have Chaz get busy switching out that wasted tire. I'm calling the base. Someone's got to tell the boss we just fucked this thing up big-time."
She didn't seem to notice the tiny flex of Mira's fingers. Didn't real-ize that the twitch of muscle response bumped Mira's hand against the hilt of the dagger lying on the floor next to the front seat where she sat slouched.
Mira focused on the cold metal hilt of her blade as the man ran off to carry out his instructions, and the woman turned away to contact the one who led them.
"They should be here by now." Bowman's voice was more snarl than words as he stalked through his stronghold nearly three hours after the call came in from the botched field op.
The petite young woman in charge of communications for the rebel base camp located south of Boston hurried to keep pace with him in the bunker's gloomy corridors. She hooked a lock of her short indigo-dyed hair behind an ear bearing a dozen tiny metal loops. "I've been trying to reach them for a situation update, but so far no response."
"When's the last time you tried, Nina?"
"Five minutes ago."
