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Liam squeezed off a shot that allowed Gage to take a breath, get his feet under him, and get moving with them. “All that time behind a desk,” Liam quipped. “Making you soft.”
His lieutenant grunted. “I can still beat you in the training house.”
Yes, he probably could. Liam chuckled. Then he spotted a guy heading for them. “Three!”
Jasper took the guy out.
Liam stepped over the man in the hall and recognized the face. “He’s one of Raphi’s guys.”
“You think he’s here?” Blake asked, his tone dark in a way that wasn’t going to be good for Raphi if they found him.
“Steady.” Liam said it like an order, even though Gage was the senior cop right now. He needed them to hold it together until they found the three women. His stomach clenched. Roxie had been taken from the house. A Vanguard operative was dead.
Peter had taken lead of the team on the far side of the building. Probably, it was as much about the fact Bob was in the hospital being treated as it was about his friend being missing. The kid cared a whole lot, and he was strong enough to back that up with the skills he’d accrued.
Good thing Liam wasn’t on his bad side and that Vanguard was backing them up now. There were plenty of good cops, but the dirty ones—or whoever had paid the dispatcher to respond the way they had—soured him on calling for help. He’d use the police band in future, so no one could tell him his badge number didn’t exist.
Clare was currently in a meeting with Russ Franklin and the FBI. They would get the particulars sorted out, but Liam didn’t care about that when there were people here to be saved.
His mom. His best friend’s sister. His Roxie.
God, go before us.
They cleared most of the ground floor. Vanguard headed upstairs, and they took the last hallway. Patient rooms. Treatment areas that should be full of residents, but each room was empty of occupants and furniture.
“Last door.” Jasper started walking faster.
The entire hallway was a funnel that could spell their deaths if there were gunmen in the room. They hugged the walls and stacked up to hit the door.
Blake shifted Jasper out of the way and kicked it open himself.
They swept it, but Liam heard his mom cry out before Jasper and Blake were done looking in the corners and behind the door.
Blake cut his sister’s hands free, and she launched at him, crying out. He held on to her.
Jasper cut Liam’s mom free, but Liam was right there. “You okay?”
“Ready to get out of here.” She smiled, but it was wobbly. She held her hands out so they could assist her to her feet. “Did you find Roxie?”
Liam hugged his mom, keeping her out of the way of all the pouches and weapons on his belt and attached to his vest. He rubbed up and down her back. “Conrad isn’t awake, but they said he’s stable.”
She let out a breath.
“Bob is being treated, but the last I heard he’s awake and making sense.”
She squeezed him with the arms that had held him when he was little, when he cried or was sick. Now he got to hold her.
Liam needed to ask her for information now. “Now tell me what that was about Roxie?”
Where was she?
He wanted to kick another door down. Find her.
Was she in the building, here somewhere?
His mom shifted and looked up at him. Rumpled but still very determined to survive. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would back down, which was why it shouldn’t have surprised him that she’d hired Vanguard. Even though it had come to this, she probably didn’t regret her choice for a second.
The cost was high, but she’d saved more lives than what had been lost.
