Page 46 of Assassin's Game
Remi was driving the town car, and we let him turn around first, then followed. When we pulled onto the main road, he was just ahead. About a quarter mile from the bridge, he stopped the car in the middle of the road, fiddled with the controls we’d added, then faced us. His thumbs-up was clear before he jogged toward the overpass ahead. He would wait to one side, making certain no cars happened to be underneath us with a 5500-pound brick headed their way.
“Ready?” I asked, the question rhetorical.
“Get on with it,” Mikaela said from the back seat.
I pulled the remote controls up on the mini computer we used for missions—state-of-the-art, completely custom, built by me. The car synced quickly, and the others watched as I revved the engine a couple of times experimentally.
“Here we go,” I said. Releasing the brakes on the town car, I hit the gas and steered for the far edge of the overpass ahead. I watched on the computer screen and the others watched through the front window as the car sped toward its fate, the front door swinging wildly where Remi had left it unlatched.
Second rushed by, too few seconds, and then the vehicle clipped the edge of the overpass and sailed off the side in a graceful arc before slamming into the empty highway below. An immediateboompreceded a flash of flames as the car detonated.
Titus drove the van forward, and as we neared the overpass, Mikaela climbed into the back and flipped open the door. Unlatched the driver’s restraints. The man stirred just in time to be rolled onto the bumper, then out of the van. Titus stopped just long enough for Remi to jump in, and Mikaela shut the door behind him.
We’d gone no more than a couple of minutes down the road, headed back to grab the Corolla, when the team phone beeped with an incoming text. My gut knotted for no reason when I saw Monty’s name pop up.
I tapped the phone. A curse escaped, loud in the anxious silence of the van.
“What is it?” Mikaela asked. “What happened?”
I looked at Titus. “We need to hurry.” Unhooking the cell, I passed it back to Mikaela, knowing she would want to see for herself. “There’s a problem with Rhys. They were attacked. Rhys is hurt.”
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Chapter Twenty
Nix —
“He’s allergic to what?” Eli asked.
I couldn’t stop pacing the path I’d carved out behind the ragged couch Rhys lay on. My teammate’s lips had returned to their normal color by the time Monty got him back to the warehouse, but I’d seen them before, knew what it looked like when he couldn’t breathe because his throat was swollen shut. I rubbed the heels of my palms hard over my eyes. “He has a severe allergy to ketamine.”
“The shit we use to knock out every target we want to keep alive?” Eli’s wide eyes and high brows told me he realized exactly how dangerous this could get.
“He never goes on an op without an epi,” Monty said. He slouched in a chair next to Rhys’s head, his face nearly as gray as our teammate’s. “We all know how to administer it, as well as the diphenhydramine he carries just in case. It just…” Monty crossed his arms over his chest, rubbing his biceps hard as if he was cold. “It took me longer to get to him than it should have.”
They’d been searching Sullivan’s empty house. It should have been safe—Sullivan didn’t employ guards, just a grade A security system Monty could bypass in his sleep. If I’d thought there was a risk of attack, I never would have sent the two of them in alone.
I’d messed up. And Rhys had almost paid with his life.
Remi joined us as he clicked off his call with Leah. “She agrees, nothing more for us to do as long as he’s breathing normally again.”
“We’ve dealt with this before,” I snapped, not meaning to but unable to keep my emotions out of the words. “We’ve had to. Hospitals aren’t around every corner in the places we’ve worked.”
Remi eyed me a moment, and somehow the calm in his gaze made me feel worse. I’d rather he snap back, yell, get mad. Then I’d have something to focus on other than Rhys’s sleeping form overflowing the too-small couch.
Finally he spoke. “I’m just making certain there’s nothing we could help with. Anything else we can watch for. Leah is a registered nurse. It never hurts to ask.”
We are not the enemy,his tone said, but I needed an enemy. I needed someone to fight, because the man who’d done this to Rhys was long gone.
Focus on something else, Nix.
“You made sure she didn’t say anything to Maris?” My sister would lose her shit if she knew Rhys had been injured and she wasn’t with us.
Remi nodded. “Maris is asleep in the guest room on Abby and Levi’s floor of the mansion.”
I wanted to go get her, bring her here. Know my family was safe and together.
I couldn’t.
