Page 11 of Fixed Asset

You’re wearing it.

Jack gave me his vest, which meant he’d left himself unprotected.

Damn.

Chapter Four

By the time I got my ass planted in the passenger seat, Pete had the engine running.

“Hold tight,” he warned.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure Cat was secure, or as secure as someone in the back of a van kitted out for transport, not passengers, could be.

She was eyeing her pack behind Pete’s seat. I bet she was still trying to puzzle out how Mason had gotten it off her while I’d had her arms pinned to her sides.

She reached out, grabbed a strap, and had her answer.

“You cut my straps,” she muttered.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Mase told her.

Pete hit the gas. Fallon grabbed Cat by the back of my vest as she pitched to the side.

“Might want to brace, he’s taking out—”

Fallon didn’t finish, mainly because Pete crashed through the garage door, rendering his warning moot. The van veered right and Pete corrected. I turned to face forward and grabbed my RXM from the glove box, leaving my M4 wedged between the center console and the seat as my last resort.

“I’ve got four at our nine,” I said, calling out the four men to the left of the vehicle.

Pete would have to take care of them. I couldn’t shoot across him. He swerved the van to the left, gunned the engine, and played chicken with four Honduran gang members who would rather be run over than go back to Lopez and explain how they pussied out and ran for cover.

I scanned to the right, found the two others, and engaged, sending warning shots instead of taking them out.

“Brace,” I called back to the team.

A second later, Pete hit the chain-link gate. Mangled metal scraped the side of the van as he drove through.

I pulled the barrel of my RXM back into the vehicle and out of sight. The road was empty of pedestrians, but in this neighborhood, that didn’t mean shit. Lopez had scouts everywhere, peeking through dirty windows, sitting in cars, on the rooftops . . . Anywhere someone could hide, they did.

“One of you call in to Shep. Have him run the footage and catalog. We also need a new safe house,” Pete instructed.

“Shepherd Drexel?” Cat asked.

I clamped down on my molars in an effort not to growl my frustration and focused on watching the road.

I wasn’t surprised Cat knew who Shepherd Drexel was. Shep was a well-known hacker. He also skirted the boundary between morally gray and morally bankrupt. It wasn’t that the man didn’t know right from wrong—he did. He just lived by the code of: by any means necessary. Whereas most people had lines they wouldn’t cross, Shep would back up and take a running start before he leaped over them.

So Cat knowing who Shep was wasn’t what had me struggling to keep my attention on my surroundings. It was the wonder I heard that was borderline giddy. The last person Catarina Keys needed to have contact with was Shepherd Drexel. The two of them together would do my head in.

“Yeah,” Fallon answered. Now I wanted to turn around and punch my teammate. “He runs intel for us.”

“Seriously? I thought he—”

“We got a tail,” Pete thankfully cut in. “White Honda.”

I glanced in the side mirror and spotted the old hooptie.

“Driver and passenger,” I confirmed. “I can’t see if there’s anyone in the back.”