Page 28 of Tactically Acquired

My smile slipped a little and I leaned back in my seat. “Man, talk about cranky kidnappers. I really thought they’d find the whole thing kind of funny and we’d all have a good laugh over it.”

“Yeah, it’s so fucking hilarious,” Spencer grumbled.

I sighed heavily. “You know, you’re just not looking on the bright side of things. We’re about to be free!”

He snorted. “Great. Free. Fucking wonderful. And I have a black eye for my trouble. That’s just fucking great.”

“You know, you don’t normally swear this much.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t normally get me kidnapped.”

“This is gonna be one of those things you throw in my face for the rest of my life, isn’t it?”

He slowly turned to face me, his eye swelled shut even more than before. “Does it look like I’ll forget about this anytime soon?”

8

SLIDER

I slammed the door and glanced around, not seeing a damn person waiting for us. The time on my watch read half past twelve. We were a half hour late.

“Dammit,” I swore under my breath.

“Do you think they headed back to their houses or the studio?” IRIS asked.

“Possibly.”

“I’ll get ahold of the director,” Thumper muttered, placing the call.

It was already hot as hell with the sun beating down on me. I strolled a few feet away, glancing around the small airport, just to be certain we were in the right location. In the distance, something reflected off the ground like little diamonds. Thumper called out to us, but I ignored him and jogged over there, my gut telling me this was not good.

I didn’t even get within twenty feet before I knew the situation was fucked.

“Yo!” I called out, jogging the rest of the way before kneeling on my haunches. I grabbed a cloth out of my pocket and picked up one of the spent casings, inspecting it before looking at theothers. They were all over the fucking place. Whoever was here didn’t care about cleaning up after themselves.

“What the fuck happened?” Thumper asked.

“We need to find Audrey and Spencer on the double,” I said, shifting into work mode.

“IRIS, get on with Rae. See if she can pull up any camera footage from the area,” Thumper commanded. “Slider, call Lock and fill him in on what you’ve found.”

I nodded and pulled out my phone, dreading talking to the boss about this particular situation. I half-hoped he wouldn’t answer, but as usual, he picked up before the second ring.

“Slider, you’ve got the package?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

I glanced back at the casings on the ground and flinched. “We’re at the airport, but they’re not here.”

“Why aren’t they there?”

“Thumper’s trying to find out right now.”

I hoped he wouldn’t figure out that I was calling past the pick-up time.

“Why didn’t you call it in a half hour ago?”

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