IT TURNED OUT he wouldn’t have to break down or shoot his way through the sliding glass door. It was unlocked. Sebastian cracked it open an inch, and then he crouched down and looked through the glass at the spare, dimly lit kitchen, used, he guessed, strictly for entertaining. It was big enough to service a hotel restaurant.
Sebastian had never pulled the trigger on someone who hadn’t deserved it. The people in his line of work had no illusions about the business they were in, and not once had he ever lost sleep over his actions or decisions. If anything, he slept more soundly, comforted by the knowledge that he had performed a valuable service, not only for the city of Los Angles but also for humanity.
His blood hummed at the thought of putting Paul down. But he wouldn’t do it at the expense of saving his daughter. Grace was the goal.
But he needed Faye to play along, do her part. Would she? He had offered her a solid financial incentive, plus his promise to help her locate her twin brother.
Sebastian heard breaking glass.
Smiled.
Good girl, he thought, a jolt of adrenaline surging through his limbs. He jumped to his feet and threw the door open as the grenade exploded in a deafening boom. In front of him was a swinging door. Just a bump of a hip or shoulder, and it would open.
In the movies, chaos was a well-orchestrated affair, perfectly lit and flawlessly executed. In real life, chaos was mean and ugly and merciless. It stripped people of their manners and humanity. When Sebastian charged into the great room, or whatever the owners called it, the stock of the AR-15 wedged firmly against his shoulder, his gaze down the iron sight, he saw the goons, many of them armed, blinded by the flash grenade. Some trampled over one another, like nocturnal insects suddenly exposed to light, as they fought to see and fought their way to the exit on the far right of the room. The blast had blown out the windows, and the wind coursing through the shattered glass scattered the clouds of gray-white smoke.
Sebastian rested his cheek against the bump stock’s grainy polymer and opened fire.
Save Grace, kill Paul—and Faye. Sebastian liked her—she was a good kid and all, smart and tough—but she knew too much about him, and he couldn’t have that hanging over his head, not with the new life waiting for him with Ava and their daughter. Save Grace, kill Paul and then Faye, in that order.
Back at the Range Rover, when Sebastian had handed her the AR-15, Ellie knew, without a doubt in her mind, that he was going to go inside the mansion, guns blazing, and mow down every single person possible in his quest to save not only his daughter but also himself. It didn’t make sense to leave witnesses.
And that includes me, she thought. I’m a witness. She had found Paul for him, and while Sebastian needed her to cover the front door and prevent Paul from leaving or, even better, take him out, the moment Paul was out of the picture, she suspected she was, too. Why fork over two million when, with a single bullet, he could kill her and leave with his daughter, all of his problems solved?
Ellie had taken cover behind the trunk of a valley oak so large and old, she suspected it had been there since the world’s inception. She lay in the prone position favored by snipers, but she didn’t have a bipod to hold her rifle steady, so she had to make do leaning the left side of the rifle’s handguard against the tree trunk. The plastic mask felt slick against her wet face, her head damp underneath the hood.
The blast from the grenade had blown out most of the windows. When she heard muted gunfire coming from inside the mansion, she felt the lining of her stomach constrict, as though someone were holding a flame to it.
She was sure Sebastian was killing them—killing everyone he could. If she went in there, she knew she’d find piles of dead and wounded, all casualties in his quest to save his daughter, Grace.
His daughter, Ellie thought. It explained why Sebastian had been so driven, so determined to search the properties.
Her spot offered her the best cover but not the best line of sight. She was lying roughly two hundred yards away, east of the entrance, at a forty-five-degree angle, and on a slight incline. Ellie stared through the target scope, blinking sweat from her eye, at the front door, which was, amazingly, still shut. Once it opened—and it would at any second—people would funnel through it, scrambling in all directions. If Paul was among them—and if she was inclined to take him out (and she wanted to, for Danny)—it would be nearly impossible to get off a clean shot. She wasn’t a trained sniper, had no idea how to hit a moving target, let alone do it cleanly, without collateral damage.
The same principle applied to shooting a vehicle, even if it was stationary. She had fired an AR-15 before, but she had no idea how the weapon she held in her hands had been calibrated, if it had been calibrated at all; if it had been cleaned properly and wouldn’t jam. And then there was the wind to consider, and she didn’t know how to factor that into her shooting.
The door opened, swinging into the house.
Her heart pounding and her breath coming hard and fast, the odors of grass and the arid, sunbaked earth beneath her filling her nostrils, she watched as armed men bolted outside. The entryway got choked with bodies, just as Sebastian had predicted, but mainly because three armed bodyguards were flanked around a small, chubby, and terrified Middle Eastern man.
Paul came out last, backward, with Sebastian’s daughter gripped in a powerful choke hold; he was using her as a human shield. He was armed with a handgun—a nine, by the looks of it—and he fired several shots into the house; at Sebastian, Ellie assumed. Two of the bodyguards in the rear-flank position had turned to the house and fired as they moved backward, providing covering fire to protect their boss, or whoever he was. When they ran out of ammo, they replaced their spent magazines with fresh ones, all with the practiced ease and confidence of professionals used to handling weapons.
Paul fired as he whipped his head back and forth, trying to get a quick lay of the land. Ellie had the side of his torso lined up in the scope’s reticle.
She thought of Danny and wanted to take the shot—and would have, too, if Paul hadn’t taken a hostage. He held Grace Lewis effortlessly, like she was a doll, the woman’s face turning a dark crimson and her bare feet kicking above the ground as she tried to pry his forearm away from her throat.
Take the shot.
She couldn’t.
Too risky. If she was off just a bit, she might hit Grace. She was an innocent.
Paul’s handgun either ran out of ammo or jammed; he tossed it aside as he moved to the nearest car—a red Lamborghini that screamed “middle-aged man with small penis having major midlife crisis.” Ellie watched his hand reach into his pants pocket and come back with a key fob. He opened the driver’s-side door and turned, his back facing her—
Ellie fired.
The shot went wide, the bullet exploding the Lamborghini’s back window.
Paul spun around so fast, he lost control of his hostage. Grace slipped from his grip. He thought about going after her, decided against it. He slid behind the wheel of the sports car. Ellie sprang to her feet, eyes locked on Grace, and ran.