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I aimed for the tires and jerked back as a bullet hit the back of the elevator, leaving another dimple. Their van surged, screeched around the corner, and shuddered to a halt behind a huge concrete column.
I punched the button on the handheld. “Mick! Where the fuck are you?”
“Trying to find you! We had to circle the whole complex and the traffic is fucking us up! Shoulda gone in with you, goddammit!”
“Just hurry,” I snarled.
A gun barrel poked around the concrete column. I aimed for the spot. Fired.
The bullet gouged a hole in the concrete, ricocheted and smashed a nearby BMW’s window. Glass shattered, tinkling. The guy who’d taken one in the leg was dragging himself, crawling on one knee, leaving a blood smear on the long slog to the concrete column where the others lurked. They hadn’t waited for him. They weren’t laying down any covering fire for him, either.
I edged out of the elevator, pulling Kat behind me, gesturing for her to bend double. A square of heavy concrete dividers separated the space in front of the elevators from the roadway. I pushed her down beside one, pressing her flat to the ground.
“Keep your head down,” I told her. “And don’t move from there!”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“To the guy crawling on the ground. I want to talk to him.”
“About what? They’ll fucking shoot you! Dude!”
I shook my head. “They could have done that in the elevator. They didn’t. I’m no good to them dead.”
“You? What the hell do they want withyou?”
No time to explain SmokeScreen, or Shane, or the fucking hellscape my life had become since those assholes had kidnapped my younger brother.
Yeah, those pricks needed what was in my mind, so they wanted me alive. But by running out there with no body armor, I was betting my skin on it.
Still, knowing who had hired this particular pack of clowns, if it was Nicole, if it was someone else—that would be a fresh lead. And I was really fucking desperate for one of those.
A mechanical noise pulsed rhythmically behind me. I glanced back, and saw the elevator was opening, trying to close…opening, closing, again and again.
A foot protruded from the door, blocking it.
I crept out, away from the concrete barrier, bent low—
“Behind you!” Kat yelled.
I hit the ground. Kat lunged, exposing herself, and grabbed my arm, hauling me back to relative safety as bullets punched into the walls and shattered the car windows. She reached beneath the car we crouched behind, and held up a small dart.
“Tranq dart,” she said. “Someone circled around behind us. I saw his feet under the cars. Stay here, Ethan, or they’ll take you down.”
I stared at her. How the hell did she recognize a tranq dart?
She held it out to me, and I slid it into my jacket, still speechless.
An engine roared. Someone was taking the spiraling ramp down into the underground garage at reckless speed. The van was armored, with gun ports on the sides and back. Take that, you pussy motherfuckers.
Mick squealed to a halt, the van angled to provide maximum cover. The door slid wide. “Come on!” Trey leaned out, beckoning to us, brandishing an M-15.
I pulled Kat to her feet. She squawked as I heaved her up inside the van and into Trey’s grasp. “I’m grabbing that guy whose feet are sticking out of the elevator for questioning, so cover me—”
Another burst of machine gun fire punched volleys of bullets into the side of the van. I dropped to the ground while Shelby returned fire, then Trey reached down to haul me inside, too. Glass from shattered car windshields was glittering everywhere.
“We need to go,” Mick said grimly. “The cops will cordon us in when they get here, and we’ll be stuck down here with those sewer rats.”
I cast a longing glance at the elevator, its door still patiently opening and closing on the unconscious guy’s ankles. “Fuck,” I hissed under my breath.
