Page 149 of Dagger

My fingers flexed, and a smirk twisted my mouth. “Good. I was just thinking how I needed to work some aggression out.”

Atlas fell onto his hands and knees and began to move toward the outbuilding. Rising to a crawling position, I followed, keeping an eye on the window as I went.

We’d have to use our heads with this one. I’d disabled the shooter at the window, but that didn’t mean there weren’t morehiding out inside. Add on the fact that there were women and maybe kids in there, and we’d have to slow our roll instead of going in all guns blazing.

We made it to the door and flattened our backs against the wall.

“What do we do now?” Atlas asked, his head swiveling to face me.

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” I clapped back. “I thought you had a plan.”

Atlas grimaced. “Shit. I thought you had a plan.”

Cursing under my breath, I took in the building, trying to work out where we could sneak in and catch any lingering Sinners by surprise. “What about that side window?”

“It’s probably locked,” Atlas muttered. “But I guess it’s worth a try.”

Silently, we moved, backs against the wall, around the side of the outbuilding. My heart hammered in my chest, and my palms felt clammy with nerves, but I knew the adrenaline rushing through me also sharpened my senses.

We approached the small window, and Atlas pushed on it. “Locked,” he declared.

“We could break it,” I suggested.

Atlas’s lips twisted as he thought. “They’ll be alerted by the noise of the glass shattering.”

“Not if we drown it out.” I pulled my cell out of my pocket and clicked on Abe’s number.

It rang once before the call connected, and Abe’s voice asked, “You okay, Son? Saw you and Fat Ass hit the deck. He went down so hard I thought he’d bounce on his gut.”

My lips twitched. “We’re good. Found a window we can get through so we can clear the last outbuilding, but it’s locked up as tight as Fort Knox. We need to break it without the fuckers inside catching wind.”

“Gotcha,” Abe replied. “I’ll round up a few of the boys and start shootin’. Gimme a minute.”

“We’ll be waiting, brother,” I advised him before ending the call and sliding my phone back into my pocket. “Abe’s sortin’ it. Hold tight—” As the words left my mouth, a cacophony of loud gunfire filled the air.

“Now,” I ordered, giving my brother a nudge.

Atlas took a step toward the window, turned, pulled his elbow back, and drove it straight into the glass, making it shatter. He pushed most of it through, then, with his gun, he cleared the shards poking from the windowpane until it was safe enough for us to climb through without it flaying our skin off.

Atlas poked his head through the window before craning his neck to say, “Clear.” Then he placed his hands on the bottom pane, hauled himself up, and jumped through.

“Come on,” he ordered from inside.

Glock still in hand, I leaned on the wood and vaulted through the opening, landing on both feet inside the building. My head turned left to right, taking in my surroundings.

We stood in what once was a small utility room. The washer and dryer looked to be from the seventies and probably hadn’t been used since then, seeing as they were covered in thick cobwebs.

Old, musty clothes lay in a pile on a closet shelf. The place had been used as a dumping ground because a stack of old furniture sat in the corner, along with what looked like a broken vacuum cleaner.

Atlas moved toward the door, listening for sounds. “It’s quiet,” he murmured with a shrug. “I can’t be bothered with all this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. Let’s just go out there and bash some heads in.” He pulled the door open and stuck his head outside before glancing at me over his shoulder. “Clear”

Silently, we crept out into a shabbily decorated hallway, the carpet so filthy that my boots stuck to the fibers. The smell wasn’t great either, the smells of rotten food mixed with the stench of acrid BO almost making me balk.

We poked our heads inside rooms as we passed them, looking for Sinners as we swept from the middle of the building to the front where the shooting came from. Then, as we got to the last room, we slid our backs to the wall, listening to the sobs and sniffs coming from inside.

Atlas looked at me and whispered, “After three?”

I jerked a nod of assent.

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