Page 32 of Starlight

She clenched her fists on the table. “But she’s my sister too. He shouldn’t have kept this from me.”

I sighed softly. “I know. I have an overprotective older brother too. They think it’s their job to keep any and all harm from you. But life isn’t like that.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not.”

I tilted my head toward the living room, where I could hear the murmur of voices. “Those people out there are really good at what they do. Marco’s team rescued me from Syrian militants who were going to kill me. This is what they do. They’ll get your sister back.”

Her head bobbed in a nod. “I want to help,” she said quietly. “I want to be there.”

“Well,” I began. “I don’t have the final say in that, but I can ask. You’re pre-med, right?”

“Yes. I’m in my junior year.” She saw my surprise and added, “I graduated from high school a year early.”

“Oh, okay. So you should have the basics down.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I volunteer at a clinic in Philly twice a week.”

“All right. I’ll talk to Marco about it and see what he says.”

18

Marco

We managed to get all our vehicles hidden in the forest behind Ephraim Little’s property with no problems. We drove in without headlights because we all had night-vision goggles. It helped that the crescent moon wasn’t due to rise until after midnight, and there were no street lights on the roads around the house. The forest area was state hunting land and the house was right up against the woods. We were only a quarter mile from our target, so it wouldn’t take long to get there through the forest. The deer stand Andrea was going to use was less than five hundred feet from the house. The setup couldn’t have been more perfect.

Once the vehicles were parked, Michael transformed the back of his Explorer into a command center. He’d had the third row of seats removed and had turned the middle two seats into swivel chairs so they could be turned around to face the cargo area. He’d installed battery packs along the sides of the cargo area for any electronics he needed to plug in. He even had fold-out tables to set his laptop on. Since there was one on either side, Deshawn was able to set up his laptop as well.

I still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but Liam talked me into letting Deshawn’s sister, Samara, come along. He’d assured me she would be an asset because she was pre-med and could assist him with anyone who was injured and that having another woman along would be a good idea because the girls might be afraid of a bunch of big guys in military gear. I had to admit he could be right about that.

While Michael and Deshawn finished setting up, the rest of us got our gear out of the hidden compartments we each had in our vehicles. By the time I had my tactical vest on and my weapons holstered, Michael called out, “We’re in.” He and Deshawn had hacked into the wireless security cameras in Ephraim Little’s house.

“What have we got?” I asked.

“One sec,” Michael replied. I heard the tapping of the keyboard and saw Michael point to something on Deshawn’s screen. He finally looked back up at me. “Ephraim is in the kitchen putting dishes in the dishwasher. It looks like he has some fresh scratches on his face.”

“I’ll bet that’s from Kayla,” Deshawn murmured.

Michael continued, “The house doesn’t have much in the way of furniture downstairs.” There was more clicking. “Okay, upstairs is a long hallway with all the bedrooms. There are three rooms that have doors with padlocks on them.”

There was a round of cursing from my team. Gabe growled, “Can we go kill this motherfucker now?”

As much as I would have liked to help Ephraim Little meet his maker, we had to be careful. We couldn’t leave a string of corpses wherever we went. “Non-lethal force unless there’s no other choice.” There was more grumbling from my team. We rechecked our gear and started to head toward the house.

“Hold up,” Michael said urgently. “There’s someone at the front door.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Of course there was. We had hoped to get in before the “customers” started showing up. I turned to Andrea, who had just finished fastening her ghillie suit and had her rifle slung over her shoulder and a tripod in one hand. “Does the deer stand give you line of sight on the front of the house?”

She nodded. “Let me get over there before you move in.”

“Roger that,” I said. I watched her take off through the trees, marveling, once again, at how silently she moved. “Michael, comms check?”

My brother nodded. We all heard our earpieces crackle to life and did a round of checks. “Andrea, do you have eyes on the front door?”

“Affirmative,” she replied.

“Two more cars just pulled up,” Michael said.

“Fuck.” I did a quick revamp of my plan. “Okay. Well, it’s nice of Mr. Little to let us in the front door. You got that camera, Michael?”

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