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“We’re going hunting.”

“Did I ever tell you how sexy you sound when that Russian accent of yours gets really thick?”

“Fuck you,” Kostya said with a laugh.

Ryker took a deep, calming breath.

This is not personal.

This is my job.

This is not personal.

This is my job.

Fuck that noise, this was so damned personal. He thought about Frank Sykes holding that little boy in his arms and threatening to blow him up. It was fucking personal!

He peered over the edge of the loading bay and saw nothing moving—no light, no sound, nothing. He waited. Finally, he made a quick and silent jump up, his rifle at the ready. Frank and his team had been using flashlights so he had chosen not to use his night vision goggles. They might be an advantage right now, but if they turned a flashlight on him, he’d be screwed.

He oriented himself, taking in the big manufacturing floor. He saw six punch presses lined up along the wall to his left, then something that looked like it stamped metal, and a line-up of machines with impressive blades on them. Quite the assembly line of tool manufacturing.

He smiled inwardly; Jase’s instruction was coming in handy. The entire floor was covered in metal shavings. It was easy as falling off a log to see all the footprints on the floor. With all the wind that must have been coming in through the bay door, he knew that the shavings had to have been spread around evenly in the last month or so. That meant that the footprints he was seeing were brand-spanking-new.

He walked backward onto his own tracks, smearing them as he went, then he hunkered down and grabbed a roll of gauze out of his backpack. He quickly rolled it around his boots as best he could so that his bootprints no longer looked like boots. Instead, they looked like some kind of warped paw print. Just in case one of the Kraken’s tried to track him.

Now he moved forward and followed the set of bootprints that he did see. It was coming from the door of the front reception area, out here to the back bay, then around to each of the other bays, looking behind almost all of the machines, until he followed the tracks to a door that led to the area that Ryker was pretty sure would contain products and maybe a showroom.

Kostya had gone around to the front of the building to reception. They had both noticed when they’d done their initial drive-by that there was a staircase in the reception area, but it wasn’t clear what was housed on the second floor of the building. That was where Kostya was going to go hunting.

“Got anything?” Kostya’s voice was little more than a murmur.

“They’ve cleared the machine shop. Now I’m going to check out what I think is the product warehouse. You?”

“Downstairs reception is clear. I hear footsteps above me. Going in.”

“Understood.”

Ryker moved over to the door separating the machine shop from the product warehouse and smiled when he saw the window in the door.

How fortunate for me!

There were racks and racks of products that went up to the ceiling. It was a place to pack and ship. This is not where the Polat brothers would have the Princeton boys stashed, so you wouldn’t think that the mercenaries would spend much time checking in here.

Ryker eased the door open and slipped inside. He went to the end of one of the aisles and peeked around. Damned if one of the mercs wasn’t going down the row with his rifle, checking each and every row like he was going to find somebody. Ryker recognized him. He was one of the men who had handed the boy to Frank. He pulled his knife out of its sheath and waited.

The boy sure took his time.

Ryker continued to wait.

Finally, he heard the man’s footsteps almost to him, but the barrel of the rifle came first. Ryker grabbed the barrel, yanked it forward, and pulled the merc toward him, making it easy to shove the knife right up and under his breastbone and twist, while at the same time covering his mouth. He watched dispassionately as the life drained out of his eyes.

“We’re down one,” Ryker whispered.

“Make that two,” Kostya responded.

“Come in, Edwards.” Ryker heard the request clearly through the dead man’s comm device. “Edwards, report.”

Ryker grinned. It was Frank, and he wasn’t sounding too happy.