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“No one’s leaving this party early,” said Easy.
“Ready?” came Shooter’s voice again.
“Front entry ready,” Caleb replied, looking into Izzy’s eyes as he said it.
Her breathing was even. Her hands were steady on her weapon. Her eyes were clouded, not bright with fear or excitement. She was definitely ready.
“Rear entry ready,” Tex replied.
“There’s a joke in there somewhere,” said Hawk.
“Tell it later,” Shooter ordered.
Caleb took his own deep breath and settled into the heels of his feet. He put his hand on the knob.
“Three…” said Shooter.
Caleb turned the knob as far as it would go to the right.
“Two…”
He cracked the door just the barest of inches.
“One…”
He let out the breath he was holding and pushed in the door.
Chapter 30
Izzy followed Caleb silently into the cabin. The opening of both doors at the same time hadn’t alerted anyone to their presence. As she fully entered the building and stepped around Caleb, she saw Hawk and Tex slowly moving in directly across from her. The kitchen was to their left and they skirted along the wall to reach the entrance without being seen.
Izzy spied Jace Paul stretched out across the couch, asleep. She and Caleb swept the room with their eyes just before Izzy moved around him and toward the sleeping man. She maneuvered her way between the couch and coffee table, training her shotgun on him. From her position, she couldn’t be seen by Jeter in the kitchen. She brought the gun down slowly, much more slowly than she would have liked, honestly, until it came to rest on Jace’s cheek.
The man’s eyes fluttered open and widened at her. When he opened his mouth to shout, she quickly moved the barrel of the Mossberg directly into his mouth. “Morning, sunshine,” she whispered. “Stay quiet for me or you’ll never make another noise again. You feel me?”
Jace swallowed hard. Izzy could see the pulse in his neck throbbing. He nodded as best he could under the circumstances. Izzy kept her eyes on Jace and hoped things went as well with Jeter.
She heard the click of a hammer in her earpiece.
“What the fuck?” said the other man.
“Drop it,” said Hawk.
“What the fuck?” the man repeated. “Jace?!”
Hawk sighed. “Think this through,” he said. He sounded irritated, like he was scolding a child having a tantrum. “You’ve brought a knife to a gunfight.”
A long silence ensued before Izzy heard a sharp clatter. She assumed Jeter had made the right choice and dropped the knife. There was a scuffling of shoes behind her. Caleb approached the couch and grabbed Jace by the arm. He hauled him up off the couch and cuffed him. Izzy stepped back and turned around. Tex was slapping a second pair of cuffs on the other man.
Izzy frowned at him. At both of them, really. The man looked up and spat onto the floor. “Fucking Christ,” he growled.
Izzy crossed the room and stood a few feet away, directly in front of him. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.
“Oh, shit,” Tex muttered.
A loud, keening cry came from the back room. It sounded a bit like a raging or wounded animal. As the door flung open, Tex grabbed the cuffed man around the torso and hauled him to one side, out of the way. A scrawny asshole that Izzy finally recognized as Jeter Paul emerged from the room just off the kitchen. He was spoiling for a fight and he hadn’t made the same mistake as his nameless friend. He lifted a nine millimeter, eyes on Hawk who was closest to him. Izzy stepped deftly to the side and forward, clearing the Sioux from her spread. She caressed the trigger of the Mossberg and fired. Thunder blasted, making her ears ring.
Jeter Paul dropped to the floor, his gun skittering into a corner, far out of his reach. Izzy was reasonably confident he couldn’t even crawl to it. He screamed loudly but the sound was somewhat muted by her recovering eardrums. Hawk leapt over him; agile, Izzy thought, for such a large man. He kept his gun drawn as he looked into the back bedroom.
“We’re approaching!” Shooter said loudly through her earpiece. He might have been running.
“Jeter!” the two cuffed men shouted. Tex wrestled the unknown man back away from the kitchen and manhandled him toward the open front door. Caleb pushed Jace out ahead of him. Shooter’s large, hulking frame filled the doorway and he stepped inside. His sniper rifle was shouldered and he had his own Desert Eagle drawn and pointed at the floor. His shrewd eyes assessed the room.
“Damn!” said Easy as he fell in behind his former lieutenant. “She shot him? What the fuck? I thought we weren’t supposed to shoot them! If I’d known we could shoot them, I wouldn’t have agreed to be a fucking spotter,” he grumbled.
“He ain’t dead,” Hawk replied stepping back over the man calmly. He holstered his weapon. “Izzy,” he said, jerking his chin at the back room. Izzy skirted around the two of them as Hawk grabbed the man whose feet had seen better days. Hawk lifted Jeter onto his shoulders as though he weighed little more than a sack of potatoes. Izzy barely spared them a glance as she peeked into the room at the end of the kitchen.
