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His legs felt weak and his head swam. He wanted to lie down.
Instead, he pushed off the hatch and followed his light deeper into one of many spurs connecting to the vast underground complex. He charged ahead, causing unseen animals to skitter before him in the darkness.
He still had unfinished business.
CHAPTER 18
THE SUN WAS low in the sky now, an hour until full darkness. Chase planned to make the approach to the main house.
The advancing private security guards were unlikely to let him.
Crouching behind a copse of trees, Chase watched the two-man, black-clad security detail move. They were not the yellow-jacketed guards of Avalon Park—beefy men with a few hours of crowd management training and a professional certification. These two moved like professionals with real experience. Likely some of the same experience Chase had seen during his special-operations days. They were lithe and light on their feet. Heads on a swivel. They were younger, and there were two of them.
Not good,thought Chase.
The high fence topped with razor wire Chase had scaled to breach Gillen’s estate was behind him. There was no escape.
Chase had no intention of retreating. There was no one and nowhere to retreat to. There was only forward now. He hadn’t come this far, done all he had done, to walk away now. He had a new mission now.
Make Miles Gillen pay.
After emerging from the tunnels onto N Street and destroying his phone, Chase ran to FIRST’s offices to collect the necessary supplies. He gambled Metro PD would still be trying to make sense of the crime scene, but he knew his time in limbo wouldn’t last. After a quick spree, he exited the offices, pulled a ball cap low, and headed west on foot. Two cruisers blew past him, blue lights flashing and sirens blaring. They screeched to a halt in front of his CityCenterDC building.
Limbo was officially over. He was a wanted man.
He avoided the Metro with its crush of commuters and taxis with their curious hacks. He kept to the sidewalks, moving relentlessly toward his target.
Gillen’s estate.
Set back from Foxhall Road behind wrought-iron gates and bordered on the rear side by a high fence, Gillen’s Georgian-style mansion on fifteen acres was its own city on a hill. A private oasis in the middle of the nation’s capital.
Chase disappeared into the woods bordering the property. He walked the fence line, assessing the best spot to scale it undetected. He chose a vantage choked with vegetation, then dropped into a crouch on the Gillen side of the fence. The plan was to wait for sundown.
Now, Chase watched the two-man detail split up as they approached, each heading for a far end of the property to do a sweep of the fence line. Eventually, they would converge, then retrace the steps of the other guard and meet back at the house.
Except one of them would discover him first. And the other would come running.
You really didn’t think you were going to waltz right into Miles Gillen’s private estate, did you, Chase?
With the tall fence behind him, a rolling green space ahead of him with no cover, and the two guards flanking him, they had him in a pretty effective pincer maneuver.
Fortunately, they didn’t seem to realize it yet.
With the sun low over the trees behind him, the shadows were long and jagged. With two backward steps, he melted into the darkness. Chase quickly unzipped his pack, found what he was searching for, then straightened up slowly, careful not to move too quickly and draw their eyes.
He looked slowly from one guard to the other. The one to his right was closer, so he sidestepped as silently as he could to his left. If this was going to work, he needed to be at the exact spot where both men converged. He couldn’t afford to tangle with one, giving the other ample time to unholster his weapon. Or worse, call for reinforcements. Chase arrived at the spot he thought they would meet, then proned out with his dark hood up. Willing himself to become one with the darkness.
In his head, he was already there. He was going to hurt these men. He searched himself for any part that felt guilt or remorse about it, but he found none.
He heard the footsteps ahead and behind him. He readied himself.
When the footsteps were practically on top of him, Chase slowly reached out his hand, containing a stun gun, from the shadows, and pressed its electrodes to the nearest guard’s ankle. He pulled the trigger and sent 50,000 volts through his body.
The guard’s back went rigid. He made a sound like every muscle in his body seized at once. Which it did. Then he went down. The second guard didn’t realize what was happening as his partner grunted and collapsed. The guard rushed for him, catching him before he hit the ground. It would be nice if the electricity coursed from the first guard to the second, but stun guns didn’t work like that.
Instead, Chase exploded from the shadows and rushed the second guard like a defensive lineman trying to sack a quarterback. The guard was faster than Chase thought, dropping his comrade and going for his holstered weapon. Chase had no choice but to drop the stun gun to hold the man’s drawing hand in place, stuck by his side. They slammed into the fence. Chase didn’t have time to be cute. He drove his forehead into the man’s nose and heard a crack, felt the spatter of blood. He felt the hand on the holster lose strength. He released his right hand and flung his elbow upward, striking the man’s temple with his forearm.
The man’s knees buckled.
