Page 76 of Own

Not a word was exchanged as they finished. But the looks I exchanged with each of them before I climbed into the second SUV felt like everything.

The darkness seemed almost thick with few if any lights on the roads as we headed for Reznik’s compound. If I hadn’t looked at the map, I wouldn’t even know what direction we were headed. Clouds obscured the skies leaving no stars or even moon to navigate by.

“Bravo team,” Alphabet said via the comms, his voice the first I’d heard since we left the safe house an hour earlier. “You’reclear to separate. Twenty minutes to target. You have thirty to get into position.”

“Copy,” Bones answered, his voice clear as steel. We took a right off the road we were on as the SUV the guys were in continued ahead. We were following a different path that would take us around to the other side of the compound.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. If this were a movie, we’d see some kind of weird montage scene in slow motion while Time in a Bottle played or something. A nervous giggle tried to escape, but I managed to swallow it down.

The wild pound of my pulse threatened to make me hyperventilate. Bones set his hand on my thigh, and he began to tap two fingers in a slow, rhythmic pattern. “Tell me five things about where we are.”

“What?” I cut a look toward Bones.

“Five things about where we are right now. Go.” He punctuated the order with a squeeze to my leg.

“We’re in SUV, in France, ninety minutes away from Lyon, on a road, in the dark, and we’re together.” That was six things and with each item I listed, I had to suck in a gasp of air.

“Now four things you hear.”

What? I frowned. Why did he—“The SUV engine, you talking, um…” What else did I hear? “Me mouth breathing way too loud.” That almost made me smile. “The road? I think I hear the tires on the road.”

“Good.” He patted my leg. “Three things you feel.”

My breath wasn’t coming in such hard pants now, but I stared at him. “Your hand on my leg. My heart was beating a little too fast, it was a lot too fast but it’s better now.” A third thing that I felt? “The air is kind of chilly in here. Or maybe I’m just a little too warm.”

His smile flashed in the dark. It was there and gone again too fast. “Two things you smell.”

“If you fart, I will hurt you.” The words just fell out of me and he laughed. A real laugh came up from his belly. “But fine, I smell you. Your soap I think. It smells like the soap from the safe house. It’s very clean, and neutral. And leather. I smell leather.” Maybe that was the belts?

He pulled the SUV in and stopped. Killing the headlights, he shifted in the seat and it wasn’t hard to imagine him looking at me. “Better?”

It took me another moment to just process the question and how my heart had slowed from a gallop and my breathing deepened. “Yes.” I exhaled slowly. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He touched a hand to his ear. “Bravo team in place.”

We were? I glanced out the window. The ugly ass compound rose in the distance, but only visible through the faint light creeping up from the fog.

“Bravo,” Alphabet acknowledged with a crackle of the comms. “You’re green.”

“Mask on,” Bones ordered, pressing a knit mask into my hand, before he opened the driver’s side door. No interior lights came on. I opened the passenger side door to follow him out.

I tugged it over my head once I was outside. It had two small cutouts for my eyes and one for my mouth. The one over my mouth was even smaller than my eyes, but it let me breathe.

The longer we stood in the dark, the more my eyes adjusted.

“Alpha team,” Alphabet said. “You’re a go.”

“Copy,” Voodoo said, the soft acknowledgement all to let us know they were on the move.

“Bravo, start the count,” Alphabet said. “Going dark.”

The count.

“Thirty seconds,” Bones said in a low voice before he clasped my right hand in his left. “Stay with me.”

Chapter

Twenty-Six

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