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Xero places a finger on his Bluetooth earpiece. “Tyler just hacked into police surveillance to obtain their registration. Jynxson and Camila are already en route to intercept Dolly.”
The journey takes forever. Lake Alderney is nearly thirty miles away from my neighborhood and the highway seems to stretch into eternity. The tension inside the car climbs with each passing second, thick enough to make me choke.
Suddenly, Xero’s phone vibrates with a notification, which pierces my heart with an icy shard of trepidation.
“Accept body cam from Jynxson?” I ask, glancing over at Xero, whose gaze is still fixated on the road ahead.
“Do it,” he says.
I tap the YES button and brace myself for what I might see. It’s footage of Jynxson moving behind Camila through a darkened hallway lined with skulls.
“They’re approaching the house from the catacombs,” I say. “Will they be able to access Relaney’s crawlspace?”
He grunts. “Through a hatch.”
It’s probably how Xero entered Relaney’s house whenever I visited. I don’t dwell on that thought for long, because another notification comes up from Tyler. When I accept it, an additional screen appears on the phone, displaying drone footage of Parisii Drive.
“They’ve surrounded Relaney’s house,” I murmur.
As two more notifications bring up screens of operatives approaching my old road via vehicle and on foot, Xero directs them using his Bluetooth headset.
I sit back in the front passenger seat, feeling powerless. Everyone is storming Relaney’s place, and all I can do is watch from a distance.
One of the screens displays footage of someone attacking number 11’s front door with a battering ram. The wood splinters,sending shards flying in all directions. Another figure tosses in a smoke bomb that fills Relaney’s hallway with thick fog.
“Spring team, proceed with caution,” Xero says into his Bluetooth.
I switch to a screen from the drone’s point of view as it hovers above number 11. Its infrared camera picks up heat signatures scrambling around the house. Red figures charge into its interior, while a trio of green markers remain stationary. I can only guess one of them is Relaney.
“What does it mean if a heat signature is green and unmoving?” I murmur.
Xero glances across the front seat at me, his steely gaze softening. “Either they’re tied up, unconscious, or already dead.”
“If they were dead, wouldn’t they be cold?”
He shakes his head, turning his attention back to the road. “A human body can stay warm for at least three hours.”
Choking back a sob, I glance down to the screen, willing Relaney to move. A fresh wave of red figures approaches the building from the catacombs, then they stop moving.
My brow furrows. If Relaney is green, then what color are Dolly and her henchmen?
“What?” Xero roars and clutches his earpiece.
I jerk backward. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Jynxson.”
Heart hammering, I switch to the other screen displaying Jynxson’s body camera. It’s filled with twisted metal and piles of debris.
“All I see is rubble. Is he trapped?” I ask.
“Yes. Rewind,” Xero snarls.
I scroll back the stream of the body camera, passing the footage of rubble, debris, smoke and dust. The image shakes as the feed rewinds, stopping at a moment when Jynxson is stillon his feet, charging out of the catacombs and into the concrete tunnel stretching beneath our backyards.
He’s running fast, his breath echoing in the enclosed space. Ahead of him is Camila’s smaller figure. Two people appear from the shadows at the far end of the tunnel. It’s a man and a woman, dressed in identical armor.
In the feed, Camila and Jynxson skid to a halt, then the smaller of the newcomers tosses an object. In the blink of an eye, the speakers fill with the sounds of explosion, and the screen fills with white light.
