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The car moved over a short smooth surface, then came to a halt. The driver killed the engine, and the car dinged when they opened their door.
“Good,” he said, sensing they were still present. “Now the fun can begin. I hope you’re ready for the long game because it will be exactly that. Long. Hard. And painful”
The door slammed shut, and he let out a boisterous laugh he knew they’d be able to hear outside the vehicle. Crazy was his new game. Maniacal. Depraved. It wasn’t a role he had to try hard at. Everyone had it in them to be those things. As joyful and playful as Wit Meyer was known to be to the people he cared about –– he had a dark side. They all did in this line of work, and he’d had his early on from childhood. Things that made it easy to dig deep and go dark –– all he had to do was let the demons out. He would be fine. He was a survivor.
His car door opened, and he was ripped out and thrown to the ground. He laughed despite hitting his face on the rocky ground and cutting his bottom lip on a sharp, jagged edge of God knew what. Wit licked the blood from his mouth and smiled.
“You came ready to play. Good. Good,” he said with a laugh. “You should have played the alphabet game… better odds, asshole.”
Wit was yanked to his feet with the hook of his captor’s arm locked with his. It hurt like hell, but he didn’t flinch. He smiled. Laughed. Then stood there silently, listening, feeling, sensing their next move. They stood before him, and he anticipated a sharp jab to the gut or the like, but no. Nothing. They were playing his game back –– in utter silence –– and it was damn frightening.
“You like games. That makes two of us,” he said.
They moved behind him and pushed forward, a tight grip on his arm guiding him forward. There were steps –– three of them –– and he took them right through a narrow doorway and inside a building of sorts. An old house maybe that smelled of the elements. Dirt, mold, mildew, rotting wood. He was pushed farther, through another doorway.
“Ah,” he said, realizing where they were.
It was a garage or attached shop maybe that they’d entered through first, and now they were inside a dwelling where he could hear and smell the fire burning. The floor beneath his feet softened like carpet, and there was furniture, which he ran into and nearly fell on. Light was creeping through his hood again, though he couldn’t make out anything. Lamps. Wit was left standing with no direction before he was spun on his heels to face whoever was on the other side of the black hood he was wearing.
It was game time
“You ready to die?” he spat.
When the hood was yanked from his head, he quickly adjusted to the bright lights blinding him to see his surroundings. More importantly, see who was standing in front of him.
Once his captor was revealed, his eyes went wide with surprise, and confusion coursed through him.
He was met with an equally menacing smile.
“Still going to kill me, Wit?”
4
“Bozz saidhe would share any information that comes across on their end,” Coy said while the team debriefed back at Watermark Tower, their headquarters. “We might get lucky there since our paths crossed the way they did today.”
The team was back home in Portland seated around a large table in the Lair – a war room-like conference room decked out with wall-to-wall technology, and other devices that granted them a glimpse into just about anything anywhere. Much of the team took up residence in the Watermark Tower – it was easy since they traveled so much for various assignments –– and it was safer than living solo, given their line of work. The Lair was the heart of the building where they came together, shared intel, discussed evidence, and planned missions. It was their version of a war room with walls full of screens so the IT experts could share information with everyone. It housed multiple servers to operate stealthily but still in plain sight. It was worthy of its name, and they could run anything and everything from that space.
Killion put his skills to work here in his domain, cracking just about anything he needed – whether accessing information legally or hacking to find answers illegally. He was the brains of the operation, the IT specialist, and a damn genius with all of his state-of-the-art technology.
“I picked the getaway car briefly while in pursuit. It must’ve been using short-range jammers. As soon as I was back on their tail, I lost them again.”
“So it was well planned,” Coy said. “And they knew how to beat us at our own game – with tech.”
“Bozz and Hen said they saw one of ours grab Wit,” Ryker added.
“Speaking of them… any theories on how we landed in the same place as Dirty Dozen?” Ronan shrugged.
Letting out a deep sigh, Rip pulled his long dark curls back and twisted them in a rubber band to hold his hair in place. “It appears, to me at least, that whatever was back there was meant for them and us.”
“What does Wit have to do with the Dozen?” Coy asked. “I’ve known the guy for most of my career, and I know he never ran with them.”
“Maybe it was a distraction,” Cane said. “Perhaps those agents thought we’d fight the Dozen instead of them?”
Rip scratched his chin. “So those agents who showed up know Bozz’s team and us, but don’t know we are on the same side now?”
“I don’t know.” Ronan sighed. “That’s a lot of effort and footwork to get both of us there just for it to fail.”
“Then maybe the agents didn’t set us up. Perhaps someone else sent the Dozen… for support.” Killion leaned back in his chair, taking a break from his computer for a moment, and rested his hands behind his head as he was clearly thinking out loud. “Maybe whoever wanted Wit had a double agent on the inside who sent the Dozen to help intercept the abduction?”
