Page 52 of Rhys

Another four-door sedan came into view. It pulled up next to the van and two large, muscular men got out.

“Grey, can you get facial rec on those guys?”

“Working on it.” Several clicks later, he came back with, “Bingo. These guys are both heavy hitters for a well-known Asian gang.”

“That’s a thing?” Rhys asked.

“Oh, yeah. And the one these assholes are associated with doesn’t play around.”

Great.

They watched Austin, his man, and the other two men enter the abandoned building. Several minutes later, they came out, the two gang affiliates carrying a large, wooden, rectangular crate.

And the care with which they were moving with it—so slowly…so carefully—made Vanessa think…

“Are you seeing this?”

Several soft clicks filled the car’s interior as Rhys snapped several photos with his camera. “Oh, yeah. I’m seeing it.”

“Do you think that’s it?” She looked at him. “Do you think that’s the nuke?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Terrified that it was—and that it wasn’t—Vanessa knew what they needed to do.

“We need to act on this. Now.”

“I agree,” Trace’s voice filled the comms once more. “Go in slow and steady, and do not, I repeat, do not take a shot in the direction of that crate. Use your training and try to take these assholes alive.”

“Copy that,” Rhys responded for them both.

Like him and his team, Vanessa was already fitted with a protective vest. And thanks to her quick thinking when she’d left the temporary apartment she’d been living in before everything went to shit, her weapons bag was in the seat behind her.

Following Rhys’s lead, they armed themselves to the teeth before exiting their vehicle and making their way down the darkened street toward the building. Through her AR’s mounted night vision scope, she could see Trace and the others heading in their direction.

She returned her focus to the group of men they were approaching. With John’s dead body lying on the ground a few feet away, Kenneth Austin stood to the side as if to supervise the others.

The two men who arrived late to the party carefully placed the crate into the back of the van. Using hand signals to avoid detection, she and Rhys waited until the offenders moved away from the crate to rejoin Austin before making their presence known.

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

“Drop your weapons and put your hands in the air!” Rhys yelled.

With her gun trained on the suspects, Vanessa watched each one closely. One of the two men obeyed their order and immediately dropped his gun and threw his hands high above his head.

The other man of Asian descent began shooting. While Rhys and Vanessa took cover where they could, she lost sight of Austin and his right hand man.

Chaos ensued. Trace and the others began yelling. They hollered for the man to put his weapon down and yelled at Austin and his man to stop where they were, but without taking a shot, they were still too far away to prevent them from leaving.

Vanessa realized Austin and his man were running toward John’s car. With her training taking over, she went after him, ducking periodically to avoid being struck by the other man’s flying bullets.

Gotta stop them from leaving. I can’t let Austin get away!

A shot zipped past, barely missing her head. She stayed low but kept running. Between the gunfire, she could hear Rhys holler for her, but she didn’t stop.

Shecouldn’tstop.

“Cover me!” she yelled. Trusting Rhys with her life, she sprinted the final distance between herself and her former mentor’s car.

---