Page 43 of Hunted in the Silence

A text from Cole waited, sent eleven minutes ago. Team in position. ETA to your location fifteen minutes.

She took a deep breath and typed back. Ready.

She was standing on the front step of the safe house when his SUV pulled up, breath showing in the cold pre-dawn air, the street still fully dark around her. Cole got out and looked at her across the roof of the car. A brief but thorough sweep of his eyes that catalogued every inch of her, as he always did, and she felt the same penetrating tingles of awareness she’d been experiencing for the last couple of weeks. Only now, she didn’t have the energy to keep pretending she was unaffected.

“You ate something?” he asked as she approached.

“Cereal.”

“Good.” He gestured unnecessarily to the passenger side she was already making her way to, making her wonder if he was as affected by her as she was him. “Let’s go.”

The drive wasn’t long, which was a blessing, as it was filled with a quiet tension that hadn’t existed before. Or maybe it had and she hadn’t taken the time to notice…

Well, she did now. She noticed everything about him. His strong jaw, full lips, wide shoulders. Amazing hands.

When the pulled up to the rendezvous point, two blocks from the Harlan building, it was barely six in the morning. The sky was the dark gray that came just before dawn, a hint of a glow low on the horizon. Cole’s SUV, Carson’s unmarked car, a Bureau van with the entry team, Olivia’s sedan. Five vehicles spread across two blocks with no visible connection to each other, each one dark, each one waiting.

Brynn sat in Cole’s passenger seat and silently watched the building through the windshield, acutely aware of every breath she took, Cole took, every whisper of movement. Even though her focus needed to be on what lay in front of them.

She squeezed her eyes shut, took a steadying breath, and refocused herself from the inside out. From this vantage, she could see the front entrance and a portion of the east facing corner. The side entrance was out of view, but she knew it was there. She knew the rear was there too, knew Dax was already in position with the hydraulic cutter and had likely been in position well before any of the rest of the team arrived because that was the kind of man Dax Mercer was.

The radio on the dash crackled to life. Dax’s voice, low and even. “Rear is ready.”

Cole picked up the radio, his voice a low rasp that made a butterfly flutter in her stomach. “Copy. Hold.”

Brynn’s hands were in her lap. Still. Clamped so tightly together, she felt the pulse between her fingers.

Cole glanced at her. She looked back at him, and for one second, something in his expression, fear maybe, a silent request for her to be careful, followed by her silent promise to do just that, passed between them.

Whatever this was that had been building between them had crossed the strictly professional line, and both of them knew it, but it wasn’t something that either of them were going to bring up at the crack of dawn while in the middle of an active mission.

“Stay on my left when we go in,” he said, his voice rough. “Two steps behind me until I tell you the south room is clear.”

“Two steps,” she agreed with a nod.

“And the vest.”

She unzipped her jacket to show him the vest underneath. She’d put it on at the safe house. He’d asked her to, and she’d done it without argument because she’d thought about Caitlin Marsh in that building and decided that the time for managing her own pride about protective gear was not today.

Something in Cole’s face settled when he saw it. He looked back at the building.

At six-oh-three, Finn’s voice came through the radio. He’d been on foot surveillance since five-thirty, moving through the neighborhood with the ease of someone who’d grown up on these streets. “Shift change just happened. Two out, two in. You’ve got a twenty-minute window before the next movement inside.”

“Copy,” Cole said. He picked up his radio and said, “All teams, go.”

The next four minutes were controlled and fast, and Brynn stayed exactly where she was supposed to be—two steps behind Cole’s left shoulder, moving when he moved, stopping when he stopped.

Everything happened in rapid succession. The entry team hit the front and side doors within four seconds of each other, the sound of it sharp and sudden in the pre-dawn quiet, and then there were voices inside, clear and commanding, directly everything at full speed exactly as they’d rehearsed.

Cole was already moving through the front entrance. Brynn was right behind him.

The main floor of the building was larger than it looked from the outside, the space opening up into a high-ceilinged storage area with shelving units along the walls. Two men were already pinned on the ground with two of their team members on top, their knees planted between their shoulder blades. Brynn had known the operation would move fast, but it was still shocking to see.

She scanned the room for the woman.

She found her at the edge of a makeshift partition at the north end of the building.

Dark hair, average height, mid-thirties. She was standing stock still with her hands at her sides, her composure a mix of fear and confusion that was, technically, convincing. Brynn had seen exactly that look before—practiced and completely fake.