Page 44 of Butcher

“One hand tied behind your back,” Isla muttered so softly that only I heard her. I was about to ask and she shook her head dismissively.

Smoke let out a happy grunt as he pulled a box of cigars out of one of the filing cabinets. He shoved Hell away when Hell got too close totouching his treasure. He pulled the box in close to his chest and glared at his friend. “Mine.”

“Didn’t your mom ever teach you to share?” Hell muttered, scowling at him.

“Not when it comes to Cuban cigars she didn’t,” Smoke replied.

“Besides, his mom was a selfish cunt,” Ricochet added.

Smoke pointed at him, giving Hellfire a ‘see, I don’t have to share’ kind of look.

Hellfire rolled his eyes and kept searching through the walls of filing cabinets.

“What about Glitch?” Toxic asked, looking bored as he leaned against the desk in the middle of the room. He wasn’t bothering to search since the rest of us were.

“Who’s Glitch?” Ricochet asked.

“Oh, right,” Toxic said. “You guys haven’t met him yet. He’s Cypher’s techie.”

“Is he any good?” Smoke asked. “‘Cause he has to be better than Riptide here or he’s not finding shit.”

Rip flipped him off, but didn’t seem to be truly bothered by the comment. Flipping Smoke the bird seemed to be more an obligation to the happy-go-lucky fucker than anything.

“I mean, Cypher recruits the best of the best for his security company,” Toxic answered with a shrug. “I want to say Glitch was a part of some alphabet government agency before Cypher stole him away.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Lock told everyone as I jerked open a closet. “I’ll call Cypher, see if Glitch can help. If he can’t, we’re getting a hold of whoever you used,” he warned Isla.

My foot hit something on the floor and I looked down, “Guys,” I called out.

Everyone stopped and Lock came to stand next to me. “Fuck! Out! Everyone out!”

There wasn’t time. The timer on the bomb sitting at the bottom of the closet had less than a minute on it. There was no way we were getting out of this building before it came down on top of us. Not tomention all the other people in this fucking building. It was in downtown Tucson. Reaching in, I grabbed the fucking thing.

“Was anyone an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Tech?” Isla asked, watching with wary eyes as I moved across the room.

“No,” Hush replied.

Everyone was waiting because despite Lock’s order, once they realized I wasn’t leaving they’d stopped. Lock moved over to the window. “There’s a dumpster down there,” he said, pointing.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best we were going to get. Thankfully, the damn bomb wasn’t very big. I didn’t have a lot of experience with this shit, I was more of a hack and slash, or shoot and move, kind of man, but I knew enough to know this thing wasn’t going to level all the buildings around us. If I could get it away from this room the threat would be minimal. The only reason it was an issue here was because we were in the middle of the building. If it took out enough of the floor the building on top of us would come crashing down and would crush everything below it.

Moving over to the window, I gauged the distance, then chucked the bomb out. We watched as it landed in the partially full dumpster, then took cover. There was still a chance it would take out the building at the base, or even turn the dumpster into shrapnel, sending shards of steel through the building, but fuck I hoped it wouldn’t. Grabbing Isla around the waist, I hauled her away from the outer wall and covered her with my body.

She didn’t have a chance to protest because the boom of the bomb shook the building. Plaster and glass rained down as the concussion caused the windows to break. We all waited, breaths held to see what would happen next.

“Time to go,” Lock muttered, motioning for everyone to leave. He waited until we were all out, making our way down the stairs before he followed. That was the kind of leader he was. He led by example. He led the charge, and you wouldn’t see him running away, leaving his men to follow.

As soon as we got out onto the street, we could see the aftermath. Trash was splattered up against the two buildings the dumpster hadbeen parked between, and it looked like the fucking thing had vomited its contents everywhere. I’d been right. It would have been a bad day for us if we’d been in the room when that fucking thing went off, but out here there wasn’t much for it to damage. Though the surrounding brick walls did have scorch marks on them. And the dumpster was on fire while the green paint boiled and melted onto the pavement.

We kept moving. The last thing we needed was anyone pointing us out once the cops got here. Sirens were already wailing as the police, firefighters, and ambulances rushed past. People were pouring out of both buildings, helping us get lost in the crowd until we got to our bikes.

“Safe to say he knows we’re onto him,” I told the group as we all got on our bikes.

“Yeah,” Hush muttered. “We better not give him too much time to try again.”

“We won’t,” Lock replied, “but we have too much to lose to run off all half-cocked. Rip, stay behind, figure out how he got past the cameras and got that bomb in here, then make sure it doesn’t happen again. He must be running some high dollar tech. We need to get our shit in order before we can take this fucker out.”

“It’s only been a few hours,” Rip muttered. “So either he looped the security feed days ago so that anyone looking would think he was still here, or somehow he knew we were coming and beat tracks and looped it then.”

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