Nick smiled as he drifted up out of sleep. Even before waking completely, he was smiling. Oh man, yeah. Who wouldn’t smile after a night like last night? And with a woman like Kay?
He drifted up, like a bird flying thermals. Usually he came awake in a rush, battle ready. It sometimes disconcerted his bed partners, but he was helpless to resist it. He and his teammates had been trained and trained hard to be ready for anything upon awakening. Ready for combat, ready to muster out, ready to face anything, you name it. The line of demarcation between the sleep state and waking state was paper thin and he could crash through it in a second.
But not right now. Even semi-awake, he realized there was no danger, there was only Kay.
It was later than he usually woke up, that was for sure. He remembered that the curtains in the room were drawn but even with his eyes closed, he could tell that the sun outlining the curtains was intense. He was usually up by dawn, but not today. God no. Today was going to be all about lingering in bed, maybe ordering room-service breakfast. Keeping his hands on Kay, kissing her, more than kissing her.
She was here for a conference, but she could miss the speeches. She probably knew more than the speakers, anyway. He wanted her in bed, with him.
The sex last night had been really intense, he should have been wrung out, but nope. He wasn’t seventeen anymore but his dick was hopeful, swelling awake, already at half-mast. With any encouragement from Kay…
He frowned, eyes still closed. No source of heat, no sound of breathing. His hand reached out and encountered cold sheets. Not hot woman.
That wasn’t right.
He opened his eyes, frowning. The room faced east and the curtains were framed with light, casting a soft glow over the hotel room. There was more than enough light to see by, and he could see that Kay not only wasn’t in the bed, she wasn’t in the room. That left one place she could be.
Nick rolled over in bed, ready to get out and go to the bathroom. Knock on the door. Suggest a shower together. But the bathroom door was completely open and he could see that there was no Kay inside.
A chill gripped his insides. He lay there, naked, a little pissed, fast becoming a lot pissed. Where the fuck was she? Had she gone downstairs without telling him? Maybe she had something to do and hadn’t wanted to wake him up.
But damn it, this wasn’t just any morning.
The chill became ice when he went to the closet and discovered her purse missing and no suitcase. Nobody went downstairs with their suitcase unless they were leaving.
Goddamn. He’d thought they were past the hide-and-seek stage. He’d thought last night had, well…made them a couple.
The icy cold hid genuine hurt. Nick didn’t often get involved with his heart, but when he did, it was real. He’d lost his heart to her last night. Or, to be honest with himself, he’d lost his heart to her well before that, but last night confirmed she felt the same.
Or not.
Fuck.
Nick didn’t play games, and he thought Kay was the kind of woman who didn’t play games, either. They’d made what he thought was love all night, but maybe for her it had been hot sex and nothing more.
No! He rejected that with every fiber of his being. It had been lovemaking and the affection had been mutual and he didn’t understand what the fuck was going on and it pissed him off hugely.
Goddamn.
He angrily pulled on his fine wool pants, slid into that elegant dress shirt he’d put on just for her when his natural habitat was jeans and a sweatshirt, neglecting the tie because he hated ties, thinking furiously all the while.
He was good at strategizing, planning, but Kay just…disappearing had him stumped. Was she expecting him to just let her go, as if nothing special had happened? Now that hurt. On the other hand, if last night meant so little to her, maybe his anger was misplaced. Maybe he should just let it go, let her go. Except it didn’t make any sense.
Well, he could call her. Play it cool. Hey babe, where’d you go? He’d keep his voice neutral, totally down with her disappearance. Sure, you can vanish without leaving a word, fine. How about dinner again tonight?
He picked up his cell and it rang in his hand.
Kay.
All notions of playing it cool fled from his head.
“Kay!” he barked. “Where the hell are you? Why did you—”
“Nick.” Her voice was shaky, raw, hoarse. “Help.”
A bolt of electricity shot through him, crackling with desperate energy. He pulled on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, headed for the door. Of all the scenarios that had shot through his head, he hadn’t considered this one. That she might be in danger.
Every thought except Kay in danger fled from his head. That one remained like a loosed arrow still quivering where it hit the wall.
He strode out of the hotel room, wanting to get to her—wherever she was—just as fast as humanly possible.
“Where are you, baby? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Nick!” Kay’s voice broke. “God, he’s dead, Nick. Dead! I don’t know how the drone killed him, I don’t know where to go, what to do…”
Nick was running down the hotel corridor, but kept his voice even and calm, though inside he was boiling. Someone dead, a drone…
“Honey, the first thing is—where are you? Take a deep breath and tell me where you are.”
“Sorry.” He heard a sharp intake of breath. When her voice came back, it was less shaky. “I don’t know, Nick. I’m in the back of a building and there are service rooms. Wait, sorry, I’m not thinking straight…”
Ping. The elevator. Nick punched the button for the ground floor, wishing he could punch someone else, anyone else, anyone who had put Kay in danger.
“I’m in the back of a department store. Conrad’s. I’m just inside the door. I walked out of the hotel, turned left, turned left at the second street, which is narrow, then right, onto the first turnoff. It’s a service lane, with delivery trucks and Dumpsters. There’s a dead man there now.”
“There’s a drone?” That raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “And it killed someone?”
“Yes. I think it—it killed him. Mike Hammer, the web journalist. But I don’t know how. It sprayed him with something that was almost instantly fatal and it sprayed me, too, but I…I’m okay. It didn’t kill me, even though I caught some of that spray. I can’t figure out what happened! Mike said to keep my head down so the drone couldn’t photograph me and I did but I don’t know if I was quick enough and…”
“Okay. You can’t go out again as long as that drone could still be up there.” He pinged her number on his tracking app, saw her location. “I know where you are. Are you on the ground floor?”
She swallowed. “Yes. Ground floor.”
Nick exited from the elevator at a brisk walk, making his strides long. He’d look normal, but he was covering ground faster. “Here’s what I want you to do. Listen carefully, honey. Are you listening?”
“Yes.” The panicked breaths slowed. Good girl. “I’m listening.”
“Okay, then. Turn off your phone, take the battery out and don’t move. I’m coming for you, but I’m also putting a plan in place where they can’t follow you, follow us. If I’m not with you in ten minutes, put the battery back in, switch on your phone, and I’ll tell you where we can meet. Is that clear? Can you repeat that back to me?” Nick knew that panic flooded the mind, eroded memory. Most people in a panic would have literally heard one word in ten. Soldiers and pilots repeated commands constantly.
But Kay had herself back under control. Her voice was steady. “Turn off my cell as soon as we stop talking, take out the battery. If you don’t arrive within ten minutes, put the battery back in, switch the phone back on and we’ll make plans on where to meet.” Her voice shook again. “Hurry, Nick. Whoever did this is still around and the drone might have seen where I entered the building.”
Nick’s heart jumped inside his chest, but he kept his voice even. “Drones can be operated from great distances, honey. If there was someone nearby, he’d probably already be there.” He swallowed as an image of a broken, dead Kay slumped on the ground filled his head.
Stop that. Fuck that. He was thinking like a lovesick fool.
He was an operator, a man who’d been in firefights, been to war. He tightened his focus until he was cocked like a weapon, in the zone.
Okay. Not much intel to work with, but he had something.
Kay had seen a man killed and perhaps an attempt had been made on her life, too. It was irrelevant who was after her right now. Right now, priority number one was to get Kay to safety, but a drone was in the mix and that meant trouble. It meant whoever the enemy was, he was smart and had resources and could track via the drone. However, the only way a drone could kill someone that he knew of was with a missile or an explosive. Kay hadn’t mentioned anything of the kind, so they were dealing with something very high tech. Some liquid had been sprayed…a liquid that killed instantly? The only thing he knew that could do that was something like sarin. But even that wasn’t instantaneous.
He was tying himself in knots when he didn’t have sufficient intel. Didn’t matter what the drone did. They had to get gone soon—and Nick knew where to go.
The trick was in not being tracked.
He knew exactly who could help.
She answered on the first ring. Nick sometimes thought that Felicity was connected to her phone and computer by nerves, not wires. Felicity Ward, soon to be Felicity O’Brien, engaged to one of his best friends and co-worker in the company Nick had just joined. ASI, made up of the best operators on earth. The best of the best.
“Nick, talk to me,” Felicity’s crisp voice said.
“Read Metal into this. And Jacko and Joe.” Metal O’Brien, Jacko Jackman, Joe Harris. Former SEALs, just like him. Nick knew the entire company was at his disposal, but right now, all he needed was those two. He had a vague memory of Jack Delvaux being out of town. Didn’t make any difference. Metal and Jacko and Joe were themselves an army.
He heard a couple of beeps. “Done,” she said.
Stealth first. He had to get to Kay unobserved. “Felicity, I’m in the lobby of the Astoria Hotel. Kay is holed up in the back of Conrad’s, the department store. A man she was with, Mike Hammer, a journalist, was somehow killed by a drone and I have every reason to believe Kay is in danger. I’m sending you her location, ground floor. I have to walk about sixty meters along Clement Street. Can you give me the position of the security cams along the way? Kay and I need to disappear, and I can’t have someone pressing rewind.”
She was silent. Had she heard?
“Felicity?”
“Done,” she said again, and on his cell appeared a street-view map with cameras outlined in red.
“That was fast.”
“While I was doing that, I checked for overhead drones,” she said.
“You’re the best.” She was; she was amazing.
“Yes, I am.” Smugly.
“And?”
“I found one.” Felicity’s voice turned somber, serious. “It’s circling overhead, covering the entire block. It’s tiny; it’s a quadcopter, but it’s there.”
“We got your back, Nick,” Jacko’s deep voice chimed in. “Metal, Joe and I will drive into the underground garage of Conrad’s in three identical SUVs. We’ll meet on the first subbasement level and exit at timed intervals. You and Kay take one of the SUVs and head out to the Grange. No one will be able to follow you.”
For the first time since waking up, Nick felt some of his tension dissipate. He didn’t underestimate the danger, but he also didn’t underestimate what it meant to have the ASI guys on his side.
Whatever trouble Kay was in, he was going to get her out.
“Copy that.” He quickly, unobtrusively slalomed his way down Clement Street, avoiding the cameras. “Meet you in the garage, subbasement level 1 in one five mikes. Felicity, this is all secure, correct?”
He heard her huff out a breath and it sounded angry. “Please.”
“Nick…” That was Metal.
“Okay, okay.” Metal’s official position on life was that Felicity was perfect and right every time. In this case, Nick was glad she was. “Out.”
Everyone clicked off.
Nick found the narrow cross street. He checked overhead. No cameras. The buildings on either side were tall. It was like plunging into shadow. It was a beautiful day, but it might as well have been cloudy for all the sunlight that penetrated the street. It got even darker when he turned into the alleyway.
Nick slowed his stride slightly. The narrow street had been clear, he had great visuals. This alley was full of possible ambush points. Delivery trucks, Dumpsters, recessed doorways. He checked behind himself. No one.
Goddamn, he missed his weapon. Nick was always armed, always, but last night he’d decided to leave his Glock 19 at home, hoping to get lucky. Well, he’d gotten lucky, but right now he needed the weapon that was locked away in his gun safe back home.
But Metal and Jacko would make sure he was armed. Jacko, particularly, would make sure that the SUV he ended up with would have an armory of weapons.
Even though he didn’t actually have his weapon with him, he made his way down the alley turned slightly sideways. If anyone was going to take a potshot, it would be of a reduced profile.
No one shot at him. But there was a dead body.
Nick approached slowly, all senses firing. He looked up but couldn’t see a drone. That didn’t mean anything. It could be stealthed, it could be so high up he couldn’t see it. Height didn’t make any difference. If someone had money to burn, the drone could have cameras that could see a fly’s balls from a mile up.
And anyway, Felicity had her eyes on the drone, and she’d warn him. Felicity was looking down on him right now, he was sure, like some benevolent goddess, hacking into some government satellite.
He kneeled next to the body. The man Kay had watched die. To be thorough, Nick put two fingers to the carotid artery and waited for a full minute. Nothing. He swiped the heel of his hand where his fingers had touched. Forensics could pick up fingerprints from skin easily these days.
He was going to call it in, but no need to mess with the Portland PD CSU’s collective head.
He pulled out a handkerchief and checked the corpse’s pockets. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a document, not an ID, not money. Zero, zip, zilch. Not even fucking pocket litter.
Except a cell in the man’s right-hand jacket pocket. Encrypted. Hmmm. He’d probably used it to call Kay. He’d give it to ASI’s friend, PPD Captain Bud Morrison, for his in-house tech person to crack and to read calls made and received, and any other info. If the tech was any good, they could geotag Hammer’s movements. Felicity could probably trace his movements faster, but he didn’t want to keep evidence from the police. Besides, the Portland PD’s techies were good. Not Felicity good, but good enough.
Nick stared down at the body of Mike Hammer. Nick wasn’t a big reader of webzines. He wasn’t a big reader, period. He got his news from classified sources and scuttlebutt on the SF grapevine, the real news, not the stuff that appeared in newspapers. He read instruction manuals and military memoirs for relaxation.
But still, he knew who Mike Hammer was, and realized right now that he was one of the few people in the country who knew what Mike Hammer looked like. It was a pen name, supposedly because the guy liked his ’30s noir books, and because he sometimes wrote incendiary articles accusing the mighty of robbery, corruption, malfeasance, you name it. The “Hammer of Justice”.
Nick knew enough to know that Hammer wrote about powerful men and women doing terrible things. Shining sunlight in humanity’s darkest corners.
Not Nick’s wheelhouse. Any righting of wrongs, Nick did from the end of a barrel. But this Hammer guy had courage and never backed down. They’d had to kill him.
And in death, his identity would become known. Nick didn’t know his real name but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the guy had balls.
He studied the man. Tall, lean, mid-forties. It was hard to read the features because the face was ravaged—swollen, blue tongue in mouth open in a last gasp, swollen eyelids. The man had—what? Choked to death? Some kind of anaphylactic shock? From what?
Kay had said there was a spray, and that the spray had killed him. Some kind of instant-acting poison. Somehow, thank God, Kay hadn’t been affected. Otherwise right now he’d be looking down at Kay’s face too—swollen and blue from oxygen deprivation.
Nick didn’t shudder, but he felt a coldness rise in him, an icy determination he recognized from battle. This could have been Kay lying on the filthy pavement, dead. Whoever had done this was a dead man walking.
Nick took several photos of the dead man’s face with his cell, then rose to his feet. Kay. He had to get to Kay now. The dead man was dead but Kay was alive—and she was staying that way, no question.
He’d memorized where she was. Ten feet beyond the door to the building, forty feet to the right. Now he could move fast and, in a few seconds, he was where she should be…but wasn’t.
Panic hormones flooded his body. Worse, much worse than being caught in a firefight. In a firefight, he could focus like a laser beam, turn himself into a combat bot, an emotionless killer. This? This was pure pain, knives in his chest.
Was he too late? Had the spray that had killed Hammer somehow gotten to her, too, in some kind of delayed reaction?
“Kay?” He kept his voice low with effort as he spun completely around. It was a storage area, boxes neatly stacked along one wall. He gently kicked one box next to him. It shifted. Empty.
“Kay?” A little louder. Where the fuck was she? Had she moved to another location? Had someone come in and she’d been forced to move? If so, she’d have turned her cell on. He pulled his phone from his pocket. He was sweating lightly.
There was a dead guy outside. Had the people who’d killed him killed Kay, too? He couldn’t even stay in the same place as that thought, and moved quickly across the big space.
He swallowed the huge lump in his throat. “Kay!”
Something bumped into him, and his arms were open before his brain had a chance to recognize her. He held her close, grip tight and fierce.
“Nick!” Kay’s face burrowed into his shoulder. That was okay. He didn’t want her to see his face right now. He hid his face in her hair and breathed in deeply. He smelled terror and Kay.
He’d take care of the terror as long as he had Kay.
“It’s okay.” He tightened his hold. It was. He had her in his arms and whatever it was that she was facing, she was facing it with him by her side. And ASI. “Everything will be okay.”
She pulled back and he finally saw her face. She’d cried. She wasn’t crying now, but there were tear tracks on her beautiful face. Pale and frightened and distraught, and just seeing her made his heart turn over in his chest.
He was still sort of mad at her for walking out on him and facing whatever it was she was facing on her own. But his relief overrode the anger.
Kay held on to his arms. “Nick, he’s dead! That drone somehow killed him, I don’t know how.” She looked down at herself. The pants of her turquoise suit were dirty, like his were. They’d both kneeled next to the dead guy. He didn’t care. She was alive, and so was he, and they were going to stay that way. “I think they might come after me, too. They must have the area under surveillance. What do we do?”
“We get to the garage as fast as we can. Our guys are waiting for us.”
“Our guys?”
“Metal and Jacko and Joe. And Felicity’s coordinating.” He smiled slightly to see some of the worry drain from her face. “We’re not alone, honey. We have a team at our back.”
Kay let out a breath and a sob and her knees buckled slightly. He held her. He’d always hold her. “Thank God,” she whispered, her voice raw. “I left. I didn’t want you involved, and yet here you are. I was so afraid I’d drag you into this and bring you into danger and I was right. We’re still at risk, but—”
“But with our guys on our side, we’ll come out alive. We have to hurry, though, sweetheart. There’s a plan but it’s tight.” He lifted his hands. “You okay?” Meaning—could she move? He’d felt her deep trembling, had felt her knees go. She was in shock. If she couldn’t stand, he’d carry her, but it would slow them down.
She huffed out a breath, another, straightened. “Yeah. I’m okay. Good to go.” She forced herself to stop trembling, looked him straight in the eyes. “But I think I’m in deep trouble.”
Kay was a scientist. She lived in a world of data and research. This was not her world at all—a man had been killed before her very eyes—but she was doing her best to be brave.
Somewhere inside, he was still mad at her for leaving him to walk straight into danger. At some point in the future he was going to make sure that never happened again. At the same time, he was nearly weak in the knees from relief at finding her unharmed.
He snapped himself out of this mess of emotions back to that cold place. Emotions wouldn’t help, cool mission planning would. There was still danger and he had the most important mission of his life ahead of him—getting Kay away even though enemies were probably still after her.
A mission—he could do missions, even if Kay was involved. His whole life was a mission. He forced the protector inside him into a combat mindset—a tight, narrow focus on staying alive while doing whatever needed doing.
“Put on that hat.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
He gestured to a wide-brimmed straw hat she was holding between two fingers. She looked down at it as if seeing it for the first time. She shook herself, placed the hat on her head. “I completely forgot about it.”
It was possible that hat had kept her from being photographed.
“Let’s go.” He took off for the garage stairs, making sure she could keep up.
“There’s a plan?” Kay was taking two steps to his one but she was with him.
He mentally crossed his fingers. “Yeah, there’s a plan.” They reached the stairwell, the elevator right beside it. No way they’d take it, elevators could be death traps.
He looked her in the eyes. “We’re going to disappear. And stay disappeared until we figure this thing out.”
She met his eyes, hers that beautiful sky blue, slightly bloodshot, somber. “I’m sorry, Nick,” she whispered, voice raw. “So very sorry.”
He shook his head sharply. Nothing to be sorry about. It was what it was. Warriors dealt in reality, not in what should be. They jogged down the stairs, Nick on full alert, until they came to the doors to level 1 of the parking area. He went first and—God yes. There they were.
The cavalry. Or rather, Jacko, Metal and Joe, standing next to three identical black Suburban SUVs. Better than the cavalry. Better than a battalion.
He could hear Kay let out a sigh of relief. Damn right.
All three men straightened, Jacko holding out a key fob. He pressed it and one of the SUVs lit up. “That’s yours,” he said to Nick. Good old Jacko—all business. No hi how are you? Or tell me what trouble you’re in.
Jacko didn’t really need a blow-by-blow explanation, though. If trouble came knocking, he answered the door. He was built for trouble.
Kay stood on tiptoe to embrace Metal, then nodded to Jacko and Joe. She held out her hand with a flash drive on her open palm.
“This is heavily encrypted,” she said to Metal. “Do you think Felicity can decrypt it?”
“Sure.” Metal shrugged. If Kay had said, do you think Felicity can stop the world from spinning, he would have said the same thing. He believed fiercely in his fiancée’s powers.
“I don’t know what’s on it,” Kay said, her lovely face frowning. She closed his hand around the flash drive, then opened her fist again. “But I do know that a man was just now killed right in front of me because of it. Because of what’s on it. So, Felicity will need protection until we—” Kay’s voice cracked and she looked around at them, meeting each man’s eyes. “We figure out what this is and how to deal with it. There’s danger not only to Felicity, but to all of us.” Her eyes welled. “I am so sorry—”
“Wait.” Metal held up a huge hand, palm out. “Just stop right there, Kay. You don’t need to apologize. The fuckers who killed the guy should be the ones to apologize. No one is going to get to Felicity, guaranteed. And you have Nick by your side. You guys are going to a secure place and we’ll all work on this together, okay?”
She swallowed. Her throat felt raw with unshed tears.
“Okay?” Metal insisted.
“Okay.” Her voice was a thread but she smiled. Tried to smile. Metal put the flash drive in a pocket inside his jacket.
“SUVs have temporary plates on them,” Jacko said to Nick. Which was a polite way of saying they were fake plates. ASI had a vast collection of them. “That drone is still up there, we checked. They won’t know where Kay is. We’ll drive out at 15-minute intervals, you’ll be second. We’ll both drive a complicated route back to HQ and we’ll make sure we’re not followed. You head on out to the Grange. We have secure comms.”
He handed Nick an earpiece, an encrypted satphone and took out a tablet. He switched the tablet on and swiped until he found what he was looking for. He tilted the tablet so Nick and Kay could see it. For a second, Nick couldn’t figure out what he was looking at, then his mind made the necessary adjustments. Felicity had hacked into a satellite feed. He was looking at the rooftop of the building they were in, slightly out of focus, as if from a long-distance lens. “What—”
“Our drone,” Joe answered. “From a Keyhole.”
Nick bent over the tablet and watched for a minute. The drone above the building was slowly circling. “Shit,” he breathed.
“Yeah,” Joe answered. Metal and Jacko nodded grimly. That drone was looking for Kay…and it had some kind of weapon that had already killed a man.
“Luckily, you and Kay are about to disappear.” Joe held out a remote control. “The keys to the kingdom. Access codes are in the phone.” It was access to the Grange, a secure facility ASI was building on the foothills of Mt. Hood.
“Guys. There’s a dead man outside,” Kay said quietly. “We can’t just leave him there.”
“How did he die?” Metal asked.
Her shoulders lifted on a sigh. She looked sad and troubled. “I—I don’t know. That drone came at us. It sprayed something. Mike pushed my head down, I didn’t see it very well. He wouldn’t let me look at it directly.”
“That might have saved your life,” Nick said.
“No. Whatever was in that spray affected only Mike. My life wasn’t in danger.” She sounded troubled.
“Mike?” Metal asked.
“Mike Hammer. You know him?” Metal and Joe had reacted to the name.
“Yeah,” Metal said. “He worked on something with Jack’s wife, Summer.” Summer Redding had run a famous political blog, Area 8. Now she directed an environmental e-zine. “Good guy. He’s the stiff?”
Kay nodded. “The drone came in close and sprayed him with something. An odorless liquid, some kind of solution. The spray caught me, too, but I suffered no effects. There was clearly some kind of agent in the liquid that compromised his breathing catastrophically, but not mine. I could actually hear his lungs filling up with fluid.” She turned to Metal. “Can you get word to the medical examiner to test for cytokine levels? And do you think it might be possible to get the results of the autopsy? I have a horrible feeling we’re looking at a powerful bio-weapon, maybe weaponized Spanish flu. Certainly, whatever killed Mike did it in a minute, a minute and a half. Ricin and anthrax take much longer, so this is something new. We’ll know once we unlock the files in that flash drive. I fear that’s why Mike was killed, because word leaked to the wrong people that he was working on an article on exactly this. But I still don’t understand why I didn’t die, too.”
Nick’s heart took a wild leap in his chest as the image of a dead Kay, lying boneless on the filthy alley asphalt, blossomed in his head. He turned to his guys. “Can we read Bud Morrison into this? He’ll be involved in the investigation anyway. Once we call it in.”
Captain Bud Morrison was his boss’s friend, and a man widely assumed to be in the running for next Chief of Police. Bud wouldn’t break the law for them but he might be persuaded to bend it a little if there were national security implications. And bio-weaponry definitely qualified as a national security issue.
“Yeah.” Jacko checked his watch, spun his index finger in the air. “Ladies,” he looked at Kay, “and lady, time to go. Metal and I exit, heading west. Nick, you exit after 15 mikes and head north, Joe will head east. We’ve all got secure comms. Nick, you have a lot of tactical gear in your vehicle, including a DD. Fucker’s using a drone, we’ll fuck with him.” Jacko’s eyes slid to Kay. “Sorry.”
Her mouth thinned. “Whoever the fucker is who killed Mike deserves to be fucked. I don’t know what a DD is, but if it works to bring down a drone, that’s great.”
Nick held open the passenger door for her. “It’s sort of a ray gun, called a DroneDefender. Will bring a drone down within 400 yards.” And man, was he glad to have it in the back of the vehicle.
Kay stood in the vee of the open passenger door and looked at Metal, Jacko, and Joe. “I don’t know how to thank you guys,” she said quietly.
Metal shrugged. “Felicity would have my head—or worse, my balls—if I didn’t help you. And as far as these other guys,” he indicated Jacko and Joe with a long finger, “we’re a team. Where Nick goes, we go.”
Joe handed out comms to Metal and Jacko. Nick put his earbud in, tapped it. “Felicity, you online?”
“Yes. And I’ve got the overhead drone in sight. I’ll guide you. Give my love to Kay. We’ll be in touch once you guys are at the Grange.” Suddenly, Nick could hear a smile in her voice. “Let me know what Kay thinks of it. Watch your back, Nick. I’m holding you directly responsible for Kay’s safety.”
“You got it,” Nick said, glancing at Kay. Scared, but standing straight, ready to face danger. He held her gaze as he added, “Nothing’s going to happen to Kay on my watch.”
Metal got into his vehicle, Jacko behind the wheel. They were all good drivers, had all taken combat driving courses, but Jacko was in a class of his own. He would be the first out, Felicity guiding him. If there were problems, if they were ambushed, Jacko would take care of it. All their vehicles were armored and had run-flat tires.
Jacko’s vehicle headed out, up the ramp and out of sight. Three minutes later, they heard Felicity’s voice over the comms. “Drone’s still there, guys. High enough to keep an eye on all exits. If they are looking for her, they’ll probably expect her to be on foot.”
“Roger that,” Nick said, and Kay looked at him sharply. She didn’t have a comms unit. She wasn’t part of the tactical team, Nick and the crew was. Her part would come later, up at the Grange, trying to figure the clusterfuck out. Nick’s job was to get her there and keep her safe.
“The drone still there?” she asked softly.
Nick nodded. “Yeah. Buckle up.”
They waited in silence until Nick heard Felicity’s voice in his ear. “Nick, go. I’ve sent to your GPS a route out to the Grange that crosses some camera dead zones. Joe will follow you out in fifteen. Let’s mess with the drone’s head. We’ll talk when you and Kay get to the Grange. I’ll see how fast I can decrypt that flash drive. Avengers, assemble!”
Nick took the earbud out. If anyone needed to communicate, they could text him. He looked over at Kay, pale and scared but holding herself together. He leaned over to buckle her in, pressed a quick kiss to her mouth and said, “Let’s roll.”
She nodded.
He drove the SUV up the ramp and out into the bright sunshine. Somewhere above them, a drone was seeking out Kay. Good luck with that, Nick thought. All ASI vehicle windows were coated with a special resin that blocked anyone from seeing inside. What looked like normal windows were as impenetrable as walls.
He stopped for a second at the top of the ramp. Jacko and Metal had gone left. He took a right at the street and headed out.