––––––––
Huxx took point as they entered the front door of the facility. A dark stairwell greeted them a few feet inside. Without hesitation, the former Seal led them down a full flight before pausing at a closed door.
He looked back at Bree. “When we go in, you check the right. That’s all you cover, got it? I don’t care if three people are straight ahead. I’ll take them. You’ve got the right.”
Bree nodded.
She held an M16 against her shoulder. The rifle had belonged to one of the men they’d shot, so she figured he wouldn’t miss it too much. Though sniping was her specialty, Bree maintained a high level of proficiency with lower-caliber weapons.
A strap held her Remington at an angle over her back. Odds were low that she would need it inside the facility, but she didn’t dare leave it behind.
Huxx glanced at the detective. “You try not to bleed to death.”
“I’m fine.” Lloyd leaned against the railing for the stairs. “Let’s do this.”
After watching him in silence for a moment, Huxx nodded at Bree. “Ready.”
“Ready.”
“Moving.” He pushed through the door and entered a plain hallway.
Bree came in behind him and peeled off to the right. She checked a corner that was empty, then moved to the first doorway and peered inside. It was an office, though it didn’t seem like the kind used to run a business. Some sort of math equations covered a dry-erase board. The name Xavier was scrawled in fat letters, a string of smaller print that she couldn’t read from across the room.
“Clear,” Huxx said.
“Clear,” Bree parroted.
“Moving.” Huxx speed-walked down the hall and stopped at the next door.
When Bree stepped behind him, he grabbed the handle and pushed it open.
A fist connected with his face.
Fire barked from the muzzle of his gun as he stumbled backward.
A man stood in the doorway dressed in a black suit. Bree had seen him at the apartment building in D.C. that morning, leading the group who had gone after Christie Tolbert.
Before she could get her rifle up, the man kicked her square in the chest, sending her flailing backward.
A jolt of pain ran up and down her left side as she landed on her ass. Her chest ached from the kick, heart jackhammering from the blow. The gun strapped to her back jammed into her spine.
Lloyd fired at the man in black.
Bullets destroyed the plaster by the man’s head as he ducked down and charged forward. His left hand shot up, knocking Lloyd’s gun aside. His right jammed a pistol against the detective’s chest and fired.
The round slammed into Lloyd’s vest, knocking him back to the wall on the other side of the hall.
Huxx recovered and brought his own weapon up.
In a flash of movement so fast that Bree barely saw it, the man in the black suit spun and kicked Huxx’s gun from his hands. Bree had spent some time in boxing gyms and martial arts dojos, but she’d never seen anyone move with such speed.
Huxx countered the attack with a straight punch.
The man dodged it and raised his pistol.
Huxx grabbed the barrel in his free hand and wrenched it sideways.
It belched thunder as their attacker’s finger grazed the trigger.
Bree rolled to her side and jumped up. She tried to aim at their attacker, but his brawl with Huxx didn’t give her a clear shot. Her rifle held steady as she drew a bead on both of them and waited for an opening.
A grunt came from Lloyd as he bent over, sucking in air as best he could.
Dropping the pistol, the man in black caught Huxx in the ribs with a short punch. When Huxx bent over slightly, the man chopped him in the throat with a ridge-hand strike. Huxx staggered back, hands going to his neck, choked gags coming from his working mouth.
Before Bree could fire, their attacker ducked behind Huxx and shoved him in her direction.
She sidestepped and took aim.
The man batted the muzzle away just as she fired, the bullets veering off into the wall.
He twisted it out of her grip.
She tried to yank it back, but his hands were too powerful.
Bree grabbed her pistol.
A perfectly placed punch caught the top of her hand, numbing it instantly. Her fingers spasmed beside the handle of the gun, not responding to her commands. Their eyes locked for a split second before the man drove the stock of the rifle into her chest.
It landed in the same exact spot his kick had. The blow made her knees wobbly. Flash bulbs exploded in her vision. She careened backward, slamming against a door, the knob hitting her in the kidney.
Enough of her wits remained to realize that she was in deep shit. They were fighting an opponent who had run through the lot of them without breaking a sweat. He’d chopped down Huxx like he was fighting a drug addict in the parking lot of a fast-food joint.
In a blur of movement, the man dropped the rifle and freed her pistol, finger cradling the trigger. He jammed the end of the barrel under her chin. His other hand grabbed her throat, lifting her up and back against the door.
She choked against his iron-like grip.
He stared at her with a chilled gaze hardened from years of dealing death and savagery.
“A woman,” he grunted. “They brought a woman.”
Bree struggled to speak against his strangling fingers, her voice choked and gruff. “That’s right, motherfucker.”
She grabbed hold of her belt buckle and yanked the hidden blade free.
Jammed it into his side.
Felt the blade glance off bone and slice through meat.
The man groaned.
His grip relaxed.
Bree snapped her head sideways just as the pistol exploded beside her ear. An all-encompassing tone filled her head, drowning out everything else. If he fired a second time, she didn’t hear it.
She twisted the knife and drove it deeper into his side.
Blood-tinged spittle flew from his lips as he released her and stumbled away. The rifle fell from his grasp as he turned his attention to the knife jutting from his side. He grabbed it and tore it free.
Bree collapsed against the door, hands going to both of her ears. A warm, sticky fluid soaked through her mask from the ear the gun had barked beside.
The man in black staggered away and disappeared around the corner of the hall. A trail of tiny scarlet droplets snaked behind him on the floor.
After several seconds of grinding her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut against the blaring tone in her head, Bree felt the piercing pain ease just a bit. Her thoughts cleared slightly although the tone in her ears didn’t abate. Blood covered the hand she’d placed against her ear.
Lloyd shuffled beside her, his mouth working under his mask as he looked down at her.
“What?” she yelled
He yanked the mask off and his mouth moved again, but Bree didn’t hear anything above the all-encompassing tone. She pointed at her ear, shook her head. Starting to pull her mask off as well, she felt Lloyd’s hands against hers. She looked up, saw him shaking his head.
Even though they had warned her that revealing her identity could cause enormous problems for anyone she knew, at that moment, Bree just wanted to be free of the mask. She wanted to breathe air without the covering. A claustrophobic sensation had wormed its way into her gut.
And she wanted to check on her ear.
While Smith and his men knew who Detective Lloyd was, they didn’t know about Bree Manning. With a groan, she left it on and grabbed hold of the hand Lloyd had proffered. He hauled her up, concerned eyes inspecting the bloody side of her mask.
Huxx had managed to get to his feet, though his hands remained at his throat. He said something to Lloyd, who responded. Bree couldn’t make out a damn thing they were saying.
Looking from Bree to Huxx and back again, Lloyd motioned in the direction the man in black had fled.
Bree nodded, and then picked the M16 off the ground.
Too loudly, she said, “Let’s finish this.”