Page 40 of K-9 Guardians

Alarms screeched from every hallway. Socorro was under attack. Whoever blew through the gate had tripped the system. Any operatives inside would already be taking battle positions. Cash and Jocelyn on the roof with their high-powered rifles, Jones armed with his personal arsenal on the elevators and Granger... She’d left him in the garage. Watched him take a bullet.

But she couldn’t think about that right now.

Her job was easy. Get to the security room. That was where she could do the most damage. Scarlett shoved to her feet. The aches and bruises from the past few days wouldn’t slow her down. She wouldn’t let them. She dug her toes into the floor to propel her forward. Right, then two lefts. She collided with the door that prevented anyone but her and Ivy Bardot access to the security room and scrambled for her key card.

Every second counted on the battlefield. One wrong move. That was all it would take, and she and her team would lose everything.

Scarlett nearly fell over the threshold as the door released. Loud voices punctured through the radio sitting in its charging station on the desk. An entire array of monitors cast a blue-white glow across the darkened room. Cameras covered every angle of the structure, and Scarlett worked to get eyes on the rest of her team. She grabbed for the earpiece left in its power cradle.

“Gotham and I are in position on level two.” Jones’s voice was staticky in her ear. “Anyone manages to get inside, they won’t make it far.”

“Hold your position. Scarlett, shut down the elevators. We’re not going to make it easy for them.” She imagined Ivy Bardot secured in her office, armed, with both eyes on the surveillance.

“Granger’s in the garage trying to hold them back,” Scarlett said. “That’s his only way out.”

Thousands of possibilities screamed for attention at the back of her mind, but only one stood out. Sangre por Sangre. Scarlett scanned the multitude of monitors for her teammate, but there was something else in the garage. Something that shouldn’t be there. Her skin tightened to the point she was convinced her bones would crumble to dust inside her own body. “Be advised, hostiles have brought in an armored vehicle. I count fifteen—no, sixteen—armed enemy combatants in the garage, but I don’t see Granger.”

“Damn it. Get eyes on him. Now.” Ivy’s voice notched an octave higher.

Socorro had never been attacked in its own territory. For as many years of experience each of Ivy’s operatives had gathered, this was a first for all of them outside of their military careers. And it was showing. “Cash, Jocelyn. I need you on that roof in case more are on their way. Where the hell are you?”

“Almost there.” Socorro’s forward observer—Cash Meyers—sounded out of breath. “Do you know how many stairs there are in this place? Not to mention how much gear I’m carrying.”

“Just keep climbing. Just keep climbing.” Logistics coordinator Jocelyn Carville sang her own personal mantra.

“I will end you.” Cash’s threat meant nothing when an entire drug cartel had breached their home base.

“Has anyone contacted Dr. Piel or the veterinarian?” Jones Driscoll looked up into the camera set on him. “Might be a good time to let them know to stay in their offices.”

“On it.” Scarlett took out her cell and tapped out the message to both physicians. An instant reply buzzed through from the vet.

Hans ran when the alarms went off.

“What?” The question was more for herself as Scarlett instructed the vet to shelter in place. Her female K9 was missing with the other one unaccounted for after the fight at the warehouse. In a matter of hours, she’d lost everything she held dear. She wasn’t sure she could take much more.

“I’ve got movement on the elevator.” Jones hiked his rifle into his shoulder on the monitor, but all Scarlett could see was a bunch of blurred pixels as her world unraveled right before her eyes.

“Scarlett, where is Granger?” Ivy’s voice tried to keep her in the present, but grief and a stabbing of fear kept her from engaging in the moment. “Scarlett?”

She tossed her phone on the desk. Tears prickled at her eyes, but she couldn’t focus on that right now. Her mind was being pulled in a thousand different directions, and she couldn’t make sense of a single one of them. She scoured the monitors. Hans had to still be in the building, and there was nothing Scarlett could do about it.

“Uh, guys. Elevator. On the move.” Jones backed up a step, ready to engage anyone who came through the elevator doors.

“Working on it.” Scarlett ran through the elevator protocol as fast as her fingers allowed and found the line of code to take the system offline. “There.”

The elevator’s LED panel froze on the screen. Whoever was hoping to get onto the level would be stuck until Scarlett deemed otherwise.

“Wait. I hear something from inside.” Jones took a hesitant step forward. The combat controller let his weapon swing free as he pressed one side of his head to the doors on the screen. “Oh, hell. It’s Granger. Bring the elevator back up.”

Her heart jump-started at the news. Granger was alive. “I shut the whole system down. It’s going to take at least two minutes to bring it back online.”

Two minutes Granger might not have.

“We don’t have that kind of time.” Jocelyn’s voice was no longer singsongy. “I’ve got five more vehicles headed our way. Cartel based off the makes and models. No telling how many more soldiers inside. A half mile out.”

“I’ve got another dust cloud coming in from the east,” Cash said. “Can’t be sure who it is yet.”

“They’re cutting off any chance of escape.” Ivy went silent for a series of seconds, every single one of them waiting for the next order. “Scarlett, I need you to get the secondary system ready.”

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