Page 48 of Hawk on the Hunt

Fox exchanged a look with Yankee. “Well, the idiot practically did the job for us.”

“Yeah,” Yankee added, “too stupid to live.”

27

“It’s confirmed. This is the address,” Dylan said, and slipped his cell phone back into his pocket.

He, Tiger, and Zara were across from a small two-story building that looked like an old house that had been converted to a commercial building. It looked unremarkable among the row of other similar buildings. Nobody would find it out of place. There was no doorbell, no sign or anything else outside that could identify the owner or occupier.

“What now?” Zara asked, standing close to him, her apprehension palpable.

“Wish we had guns,” Tiger said, giving him a worried look.

“That wasn’t an option, or we would have never gotten past security. It is what it is,” Hawk said, then turned to Zara. “Tiger and I will pick the lock and go inside. You’ll stay out here.”

“But—”

“Don’t.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and unlocked it. “Get your cell phone out.”

Zara retrieved her cell phone, and a moment later it rang. She tapped on answer.

“Okay, I’ll keep my cell phone in my pocket, so you can hear everything that’s going on inside, but you’ll need to put yours on mute, otherwise any sound might alert Polo to our presence.”

“No problem.” She tapped on her cell phone. “It’s muted.” She looked across the street, then up to the second floor, and Dylan followed her gaze. The blinds of the three windows overlooking the street were drawn. “What if he’s already seen us?”

Dylan met her eyes. “Then we’d probably already be dead.”

Zara put her arms around him and squeezed him tightly. “Be careful.”

He nodded, and peeled himself out of her embrace, then crossed the narrow street with Tiger by his side. “How are your hand-to-hand combat skills?”

“Pretty good. Tai Chi, karate, jiujitsu, I’ve got us covered,” Tiger replied with confidence.

“Good. All I learned was boxing.”

“That’s not a useless skill either.”

“I suppose you didn’t bring your lockpicks, did you?”

“Didn’t wanna risk getting caught with them going through security.”

“Well, guess we’ll have to improvise.” Dylan pulled out his wallet and removed the metal money clip holding the banknotes in place. “I need a second piece. You have one in your wallet?”

Tiger was already pulling out his wallet, and copied him. Within seconds they had two thin and long pieces of metal to use as makeshift lockpicks. Dylan went to work, and while it took a little longer to pick the lock with such crude tools, he managed it. Making eye contact with Tiger, he turned the knob, and eased the door open by an inch. There was a steady sound coming from the inside. It sounded like the humming of a machine like a refrigerator—or something bigger.

With another nod, Dylan swung the door open fully and entered the dark interior, Tiger on his heels. It was risky to enter this place without a weapon, but it was a calculated risk. Polo would have been without a weapon too, since he came straight from the Capitol. And they were only a few minutes behind him. With some luck, he hadn’t had time to arm himself—unless of course, he kept a weapon at this property.

Dylan listened intently, and in the darkness, they moved farther into the house, following the humming sound. To their right, a door stood open, and inside the large space that appeared to have once been a sitting and dining room with pocket doors separating the two rooms, stood a large machine. It looked very similar to an MRI machine. He glanced around the room, but apart from the machine, a desk with computers, and other devices that looked like data storage, there wasn’t much to see.

Tiger pointed to the machine and leaned in closer, whispering, “That’s the same type of machine I was in. But it looks like the gurney is different. There used to be a helmet to lock your head in.”

The machine was running, though Dylan couldn’t tell whether it had been switched on only minutes earlier, or whether it ran on standby all the time. He approached the machine and looked at the desk and the tower that looked like a server. “Do you know what the discs look like? I can’t see anything here.”

“They are like external hard drives. Pretty big.” Tiger let his eyes roam over the computers and the server, then shook his head. “They’re not here. He might not be back. Maybe he stopped off somewhere.”

“That’s possible,” Dylan said just as quietly so they wouldn’t be overheard by anyone in the house, even though the sound of the machine drowned out his voice. “Let’s check upstairs.”

Tiger nodded. Together, they walked up the old staircase, aware of their surroundings as they covered each other when they went from room to room. All rooms except for one were unfurnished and empty. The room looking out over the back of the property was crammed full of mismatched pieces of furniture ranging from chairs, a bed, a dresser with one drawer missing, several boxes with football trophies, baseball mitts, as well as two old tennis rackets, and other junk.