Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“Cecilia,” I replied. I shook my head. Fuck, I needed to get my shit together. “And she’s armed.”
Eli jerked his head forward in surprise and widened his eyes at me. “Probably a good thing to know,” he spat.
“And this is why I took point,” Forrest muttered. “Try not to get yourselves shot.”
I didn’t bother to apologize, because I already looked like a fucking moron. Jesus Christ, I was always on top of my shit. We had to grab a couple of preschoolers out of a house somewhere on the other side of the world? I was the one who had candy in my pocket for the inevitable freak out. Stuck inside a busted-up school with no conceivable way out? Hey, I’d packed fucking water for this eventuality, it looked like we wouldn’t die of dehydration before we could get extracted. You’re welcome.
“Cecilia,” Wilson mused over the comm. “Now, where have I seen that name before?”
Lu chuckled.
“Was it a tattoo, maybe?” Ephraim joked. “I swear I’ve seen a bad tattoo of that name.”
“Enough,” Forrest snapped quietly.
“Don’t make me take you down,” Siah said to me as we cleared the fence and moved swiftly through the trees. “You start bein’ stupid and I’ll drop your ass.”
“I won’t,” I said through my teeth. Fuck, we were so close. I was hyper focused as the house came into view, the driveway and front porch lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.
There was a car out front, and everyone dropped to the ground as a man came out the front door, closing it behind him. He didn’t rush as he walked to the car and put a box of shit on the front seat. My head jerked in surprise when I realized he was whistling as he rounded the hood and climbed inside.
“It can’t be that fuckin’ easy,” Forrest breathed into the mic. “Once he’s out the gate, move in. Slowly.”
It felt like it took an hour for the car to drive off the property, but it had to be only minutes. Then we were on the move. Slow and steady, watching for any movement, keeping out of camera range, pausing as Wilson checked for an alarm system and then muttered that it wasn’t armed. Breaching the back door quietly with Siah’s unparalleled lockpicking skill. Moving into the mud room, then the kitchen, then the hallway. Meeting up with the rest of the team in the foyer, ignoring the opulence of the house as the sight of a woman’s bare feet came into view from a room opposite the stairs. Forrest and Wilson checked on the woman as the rest of us cleared the bottom floor of the house. The place was empty.
We moved up the stairs slowly, waiting and watching.
“Cameras are down,” Wilson said into the comm. “Got two cold ones down here. Man and a woman.”
We moved faster once we didn’t have to be careful of the cameras, but the house was fucking enormous. I had no idea what people did with so much space. All the rooms were furnished and came with a walk-in closet and private bathroom, and we cleared every single one. Each time I opened the door to a closet, I braced myself, but most of them were empty. The few that held anything were still so bare that no one could hide in them.
The master bedroom took the longest to search because it had so much shit in it. This was the bedroom that was actually lived in. Instead of a perfectly made bed and tastefully arranged furniture, there were clothes thrown over a chair back and shoes nearly covering the floor of the closet. Books were stacked on one nightstand and a laptop on the other. The bed was sloppily made, as if they’d just thrown the comforter over everything and called it good. Apparently, these people didn’t have a live-in maid, because the living spaces hadn’t been straightened up for a few days. At least we knew that there wasn’t some other innocent hiding or dead somewhere in the house.
My patience grew thin as we went through the room, because I knew she wasn’t in there. If she had been, she would’ve identified it to Casper so we’d know where to look. Still, we had to make sure that the house was empty, every inch of it.
When we hit the fifth bedroom, the one directly next to the master, something clicked into place. It was a nursery, painted a pale yellow, and like the rest of the guest bedrooms, it looked unused, but something niggled at the back of my mind. Something was off. I held up my hand to stop the men behind me, and looked over the room. A crib was in the corner with a blanket tastefully thrown over the edge. On the opposite wall was a changing table, diapers and wipes and bath supplies perfectly aligned on the shelves, like they hadn’t been used yet. A rocking chair sat in the middle of a fuzzy area rug. Next to that was a baby swing that hadn’t even been plugged in.