Page 52 of Baby One Last Time
We all knew that meant a stealth approach. They had to be coming for us.
“Mai, out the back with me. Jensen, start the engine.”
“No,” Mai said. She was pressed against the front wall and peering through a small window. “The windshield’s not tinted and I have a visual on them. There are only two of them.”
“That doesn’t mean we need a shootout.” I stood by the back door, our best chance at a clean escape. “Let’s go!”
“Get in the van with Jensen and wait for me in the alley, three blocks east,” she said.
“What the fuck are you doing, Lee?” Jensen asked.
“While they’re looking for us in here, I’ll be checking out their SUV.” She slipped out the side door.
I saw shadows pass the front window. They would enter the front doors inside thirty seconds. “Goddammit,” I muttered as I pushed through the back door. “Jensen, reset the locks and alarms. I’m headed your way.”
Seconds later, I was inside the van, which started moving forward even before I eased the door closed. Jensen kept the lights off, using the same trick for our retreat as our surprise visitors had used on their approach.
“Any chance we tripped a silent alarm?” I asked.
Jensen scowled, which I caught because I still had my night-vision goggles in place. “Not a chance.”
I spoke into the comms. “Mai, we’re almost in position. What’s your ETA?”
Her voice came back in a whisper. “I’m inside the SUV. I checked their GPS. They’ve only been two places all night.”
“Here and the other warehouse,” I said. “Shit.”
Jensen glanced at me. “Your boy set us up?”
“I don’t think so. I think they set him up. Mai, get back here.”
“Too late.” Her voice was even softer. “They’re on the way back. I can hide in here, but I can’t get out. Meet me at the other warehouse, I’ll get out when they make their rounds there.”
My mouth was dry and my hands were wet. I’d been in this situation before, with Henderson trapped on the wrong side of a door, his escape cut off because of a bad call I’d made. I wanted to run. Hide. Curl into a ball. Scream.
Calm, Kessler. Goddammit, stay calm.
“Roger that,” I said between pranayama breaths. “We’ll stay as close as we can.”
Her comms went dead.
I looked at Jensen. “What the fuck?”
“Calm down,” he said, only I wanted to punch him when the directive came from him. “I set us up on a short-distance channel to limit the ability for anyone to intercept our comms.”
“Okay,” I said as he maneuvered out of the alley. “Okay. We’ve got this. We have a plan. We’ll have her back in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops.”
Jensen and I didn’t speak as he kept a safe distance from the SUV. Driving took some concentration, because he kept the lights off while we were on the back streets. When the SUV pulled onto the highway, we followed it, and Jensen turned on our lights just as we merged with the small but steady stream of traffic.
“What are all these people doing out at this time of night?” he asked. There was less tension in his voice.
My tight shoulders loosened. We had a good visual on the SUV. GPS would have led us to the correct address, but my shoulders ticked down an inch or so when we had Mai—or at least her kidnap vehicle—in our sights. This was all going to work out. We’d laugh about it someday, maybe even tomorrow, once the adrenaline wore off. My heart pounded like a son-of-a-bitch, but my hands were steady. Even if things went pear-shaped when we arrived at the second warehouse, I liked our odds, between Mai’s firepower and mine. Until then, there was nothing I could do. Except think.
“I wonder why they set him up,” I said.
“Your CI?” Jensen said. “What makes you so sure he didn’t set you up?”
“Because Frankie’s small-time. He wouldn’t have the balls to cross the Feds.”
