Heated Pursuit (Alpha Security #1)(70)
Logan nodded, suddenly a little more somber. “Like the lady said—no worries.”
Penny wished that were actually true. As they collected the rest of the team and met up with Collins and the others on the tarmac, her stomach tightened into multiple fist-sized knots. Ten minutes later, she watched the helo carrying Rafe and the guys lift into the dark sky.
This was real. It was happening. After bunkering down in flea-infested hotels and traipsing through the Honduran wilderness—which literally almost killed her with a scratch—things were finally coming to a close. It seemed to take forever to get to this point, and now it was flying by way too fast.
Though Rafe hadn’t asked for it, she summoned every ounce of love and threw it into her prayers for a safe return—very much aware that they hadn’t discussed what would happen between them when he did.
*
Penny’s eyes remained glued to the black-and-white footage being transmitted from the camera on Rafe’s vest. Each of the four Alpha-led teams entered the jungle warehouse—Fuentes’s suspected distribution hub—from different vantage points. Screen to screen, her eyes jumped from one monitor to the other. They all looked the same. No movement. No noise except for the brief exchange of voices as the teams systematically cleared each room and moved deeper into the building.
The place looked like a tomb, the halls no less vacant than each of the rooms or the surrounding grounds.
“Where is everyone?” Penny whispered.
“Situation report, Stone Cold?” Rafe’s voice called out Sean’s handle but was answered with blaring silence. One beat passed, then two. “I repeat, sit-rep? Do you read me?”
“Fuck me.” Sean’s muttered curse echoed over the comm link as if he’d shouted it through a megaphone. “Everyone, pull back! I repeat, all teams pull back! Get the f*ck out of the building! Now! Move! Move!”
The microphone cut out, replacing the two-way audio with a static hiss. Penny was on her feet in an instant, her stomach flipping on its side as Rafe’s camera bounced with his mad-like-hell run. “What’s happening? What did he see?”
Logan’s fingers flew over the computer keys, cursing with each attempt to bring back the sound.
“Logan!”
“I’m working on it, darlin’. I’m working on it. Fuckin’ A, Collins! These computers are pieces of shit! Know how to work a f*cking upgrade!”
“Explosives…rigged…trap.”
A split second after Rafe’s words came online, they once again cut out. A blink later, the images on each monitor disappeared in a volcanic eruption of light and fire. That was it. One minute the entire team was there, and the next…nothing.
No sound. No visual. After the blinding flash dissipated, nothing but blackness filled the screens. Shock froze the breath in Penny’s lungs, and rainbow dots peppered her vision.
Rafe was gone. Trey was gone. All of them…gone.
“You f*cking son of a bitch!” Logan shouted. “Penny! Run!”
The shout of her name and the coinciding crash were the only things that kept Penny from hitting the floor. She turned as Logan dropped, heavy and unconscious, to the ground.
Agent Collins redirected his attention—and his gun—to her. “Alone at last. I believe we have a mutual friend, Miss Kline…and he’s very anxious to lay eyes on you again.”
*
Burning pain made Rafe suck in a sharp breath. Fuck, that hurt. Everything hurt. He flipped on his back and cursed. “Mother-sucking son of a—”
“Rafe!” A hard nudge followed the shout of the voice. “Over here! I found him!” Another nudge. “Fuck, man. Are you dead?”
“Poke my ribs again, Hanson, and your new handle’s going to be f*cking Stumpy.” Rafe coughed, then growled as a jab of lightning speared straight through his torso. He forced his eyes open and winced at the light Trey aimed into his face. “Turn that f*cking thing off.”
“If you wanted to take a nap, you could’ve at least waited until the work was done,” Trey joked. He stepped back, offering an arm to help Rafe back to his feet.
Rafe took him up on the assist and ignored the sharp twinge in his back that came along with the abrupt move. “I think that blast could’ve been spotted from the f*cking Hubble.”
“You’re not f*cking lying,” Stone stated as he and Chase walked up with Vince and his crew in tow. All of them looked a bit singed around the edges, Franklin a little more literally. Half his f*cking pants leg was missing. “Damn glad we didn’t opt for an all-in breach. Now the question is what set it off? Was it timing? Bad luck? Or someone off in the shadows with a remote detonator?”
“None of them,” Vince interjected. “That place was rigged to blow a few minutes after entry—at least the setup I saw in the east corner of the building.”
“It was the same with the west end,” Chase agreed.
“So it wouldn’t have mattered which entry point we chose,” Stone said, stating what they all were figuring out. “The place would’ve blown to high hell with any of them.”
Vince nodded in agreement. “Smart thing to do would be to rig every single entry point. With the amount of C-4 that was used, one trip would be all that was needed to set off a chain reaction of explosions until you have one big-ass hole in the ground.”