Page 33 of Saving Their Forever

Great. As if I needed anything else to worry about.

The city falls away in minutes. Despite the size of Seattle, it doesn’t take long to leave its borders. Puget Sound spreads out under us, and our comms units beep. Zephyr’s voice echoes in my ear.

“We have…a development,” she says.

“What happened?” My heart races in my chest, and I ball my hands into fists.

“Check your phones. Sending you some footage now.”

On screen, in a large, concrete room, three men work Dax and Ripper over.

“How did you get this?” West asks.

“I found the IMEI numbers—it’s like a serial number—for the two burner phones Ramin used to contact you,” Zephyr says, “and I played a hunch.”

“The point?” I don’t have the patience for this. Not when I’m watching my brothers being tortured.

“These guys aren’t as smart as they think they are. They bought phones in bulk. The IMEIs are consecutive. I tried ten before I found one that pinged back. It’s on, and it’s connected to wifi. So…I hacked it.”

“Can you see Wren?” I ask.

“Hacking the wifi didn’t get me that footage,” Zephyr says. “It got me a handful of text messages between Ramin and his cousin, Mashaal, detailing exactly how they’re going to kill you. Do you wear a cup, Ryker? Preferably one that doesn’t conduct electricity?”

“So they’re going to torture me. Big fucking deal. You’ve seen me before, Zephyr. I can take it. How did you get the goddamn footage?”

“Someone spiked me,” she says.

Next to me, Griff shakes his head. “Care to repeat that for those of us who don’t speak hacker?”

“They tried to shut me down. For a lesser woman, this might have been a problem, but I reversed the spike. Long story short, it’s bouncing all over the world, so whoever’s behind it is a genius. Better than me. Maybe even as good as Wren. But also…I don’t think they’re completely on board with Ramin’s evil plan.”

I’m about to tell her to get to the fucking point when she continues. “Because they’re the ones who sent me the footage of Dax and Ripper. Along with a schematic showing all the surveillance measures surrounding the Battery. And one single sentence. ‘Everything shuts down at 19:10.’”

On screen, page after page of designs unfold. We expected most of this. Drones. Trip wires. Cameras. They’ll see us coming from a mile away. Which is why our drop point is three miles from the gates.

“So you’re telling me I need to survive for twenty minutes. Ten minutes until this mystery person shuts down the countermeasures, and ten minutes for the calvary to get to me.”

“Assuming this isn’t some horrible trick? Yes.”

West zooms in on the landscape around the Battery. “It’s going to be close. These fuckers are loaded.”

“How loaded?” Connor asks.

“Loaded enough, if they don’t have five or six other men with him—beyond the ones we know about—I’ll eat Raelynn’s Stetson.”

“Ain’t no one eatin’ my Stetson,” Raelynn snaps. “Those damn things ain’t cheap, and it’s all broken in.”

“I don’t care how many men he has with him,” I growl. “He has Wren, Dax, and Ripper. He’s going to die screaming.”

“Oh, that’s a given,” West says. “I’m more worried how much trouble they’re going to give us before they start praying to their God for mercy. How much noise they’ll make. And how many people we’re going to need to pay off.” He holds up his hand before I can tell him it doesn’t matter. He knows it doesn’t matter. That we’ll pay anything. Do anything.

But he’s right to be worried. To ask.

For the next twenty minutes, no one says a word. It’d take almost two hours to drive from Seattle to this remote coastal town, but less than thirty minutes by air.

“Ain’t no room to set down,” Raelynn says when we get close to the drop zone. “Y’all are gonna have to fast rope it.”

We’d figured as much. West turns to face the rest of us. “Me, Inara, Graham, Griff, Connor, Ry. In that order. Drop quick and head for cover.”

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