Page 26 of Hollow Trace

“Maybe our hacker’s just better than yours.”

“Or maybe you had the right kind of help. Wouldn’t you agree… Officer Taylor?” She cackled. “You really shouldn’t have left your truck behind if you didn’t want anyone to uncover who you are.”

Quinn settled in beside Neve. “It’s Corporal and consider yourself under arrest. We’ll start with kidnapping and go from there.”

She smiled. “Now, I know where your sister gets her attitude from. Trust me, if I’d known her big brother was a cop, I wouldn’t have signed her up. She’s been most uncooperative.”

Heat coiled low in his gut, and he fisted his hands to keep from punching through the screen. “Touch her, and I swear⁠—”

“Save me the idle threats, Corporal. You can’t stop me any more than she can. But I do wonder if you share her unique genetic anomaly.” She toyed with her glasses again. “I’m glad I didn’t know what kind of connections she had because she’s really quite remarkable. I’m going to enjoy discovering just how far I can push her before she breaks. You, on the other hand, don’t have that much time.”

She crossed her arms and looked over at the guy Quinn personally wanted to strangle. “It seems we’ve been compromised. I don’t want Finch catching wind of this, so…” She glanced back at the screen. “Burn it all to the ground.”

The guy smiled a second before the monitor winked out, leaving an eerie void in the air.

Neve raced to the door, scanning the warehouse. “Zadie…”

Zadie held up hand, tapping on the desk before the computer pinged. She grabbed the thumb drive and shoved it in her pocket. “I’ve got everything I could before the mainframe initiated a purge.”

“Which means a full-on assault isn’t far off.”

They stepped out, falling into a diamond formation, Neve taking point, Coulter bringing up the rear. Neve darted into the shadows, following the same line Scout had taken when a klaxon blared through the warehouse. The lights flicked, casting odd shapes along the concrete floor, then died as footsteps pounded the cement, several men ghosting out of the darkness a second later, their HELIOS watches pulsing blue against the utter blackness as their rifles barked out a steady stream of brass.

Scout’s team returned fire, using the barrels spaced out along the far wall for cover when a canister clicked along the floor, spinning to a halt next to Scout.

Quinn surged forward, threw his weight against her as he wrapped her in his arms, tackling her behind the forklift a moment before the grenade blew. Shrapnel spit out in every direction, chunks of concrete blasting through the room. Coulter must have countered with his own flash bang because it erupted a heartbeat later, washing the room into a blinding mass of white light as an ear-piercing wail shook the walls. Smoke choked the air, the loud shrill deadened by the hiss of pulleys and wheels as a set of massive, hinged fire doors rolled down across the exits, the steel panels effectively trapping them all inside.

CHAPTER NINE

Scout coughed, spitting out ash and dirt as the smoke burned a line down her throat. A high-pitched whine thrummed in her head, the room sliding left and right beneath her. She inhaled, tasting a mix of pulverized concrete and sulfur as the air swirled overhead, a fine layer of dust floating around them.

She tried to move, but Quinn still had her pinned to the ground, his sheer size blocking out all but a patch of roofline over his shoulder. He groaned, finally pushing onto his elbows as he stared down at her, just a hint of his eyes visible in the darkness.

He panted through a couple breaths before easing back, shoving her farther behind the forklift when more gunfire sparked off the metal frame. She pushed to her knees, stomach roiling, the scenery still shifting like a Tilt-a-Whirl. She didn’t know how he’d gotten to her in time, but he’d obviously taken the brunt of the hit.

Her head swam as she palmed his shoulders, quickly patting him down. Pieces of metal laced his vest, one large shard only inches from his carotid, the sharp tip smeared with blood. More dotted his right arm, another piece jutted out from his hip.

She tugged him closer, relief and love battling for dominance only to curse when he yanked a couple of the shards free. “Jesus, Quinn, leave them in, or you’ll bleed more.”

He shrugged it off, checking his rifle with shaking hands before unloading a dozen rounds across the warehouse. “I can’t fight with them shifting every time I move.”

“You shouldn’t have tackled me. You could have been killed.”

He fired again, the muzzle shaking, the effects of the grenades still working through him. “I swore I’d always have your back. That’s never going to change. Besides, it was just instinct.”

She leaned in close, reminding herself now wasn’t the time to confess her undying love. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet, baby. We still need to get out of here alive.”

Coulter slid in beside them a moment later, concrete dust covering his gear, a few metal pieces poking out of his vest, too. He unleashed more rounds, glancing at them from the corner of his eye. “Christ, you gave me a damn heart attack. When that grenade landed beside Scout…”

He coughed, waving at the smoke still rolling through the room. “The only small mercy is my flash bang pushed them back some. Bought us a bit of time.” He moved over when Neve and the others dropped down behind them. “Everyone okay?”

Neve rubbed her head. “Ears are still ringing, and I’m not convinced I won’t puke, but we’re alive.”

Scout checked her weapons, scanning the dark for any hint of movement, but either the mercs were still reeling from the grenades or they were flanking them. “They’ve obviously got night vision and thermal or they wouldn’t have cut the lights.”

Coulter nodded. “Which means we either have to take them out or find a way to disappear until we can work out how to get past those doors.”