-Logan-
“This is bullshit,” Mason whispered into the comms. “Where is everyone?”
“Maybe they got the night off,” Link offered, but his eyes were scanning the rafters.
“Viktor’s info was stale,” River said, stating it flatly. He looked at me. “This is a dry hole, Logan.
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A dry hole. A wasted risk. The thought pissed me off. We came all this way, put everything on the line, for an empty shell.
But something didn’t fit. The guards, while complacent, were here. The lights were on. This place was being used for *something*.
“Dex, how long?” I asked, my voice low.
“Two minutes to set the timer.”
“Forget the timer. Remote trigger only. We’re pushing further in.” The decision felt reckless even as I said it, but the need to know was a physical itch.
“Logan-” River started, a note of warning in his tone.
“We didn’t come here to blow up empty boxes,” I cut him off, already moving toward a reinforced door at the far end of the space. “I wanna know what the fuck we’re dealing with.”
The door was unlocked. I pushed it open slowly, weapon up. The room was long and narrow, lined with glowing servers. A communications hub. Or a data center. But still, only a handful of terminals. And no people.
That’s when I saw it. A beam of green light stretching across the room at ankle height, a foot or two inside the door.
“Shit!” I hissed, throwing an arm back to stop the others.
It was too late. I’d already tripped the beam.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then a low, pulsing alarm started whooping through the building, and the bright white lights overhead snapped on. Blinding.
“Contact!” River yelled, his voice swallowed by the alarm.
They didn’t come from deeper in the warehouse. They came from behind us.
Eight men in black tactical gear. They’d been waiting. They filled the doorway to the main storage area, weapons raised.
A beat of silence, and then the sharp crack of unsuppressed rifle fire echoed off the walls. We piled into the
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room and dove for cover behind the server racks.
“Dex! Now!” I roared over the noise.
Dex, flat on his belly, didn’t hesitate. He slapped the remote detonator.
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The explosion wasn’t a single bang. It was a train of deep whumps that rolled through the building. I felt it more than I heard it.
The floor shuddered. The lights flickered and died, replaced by the red pulse of emergency strobes. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling.
No chance those Russian fucks survived it.
But as I popped out from behind the server rack, I saw that two of them did.
“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted, laying down covering fire as my brothers moved toward a door at the far end of the room. I fired two–handed, walking my shots into the confusion.
One of them went down.
The other was talking into a radio.
The door opened into a long, empty hallway. To the right, it was empty. To the left, six more Russian thugs appeared out of a side door with their guns trained on us.
We opted for the server room again. One was easier than six. Monty barricaded the door behind us as I popped the Russian fuck in the left eye socket.
The main warehouse looked like hell. Thick smoke boiled up from the collapsed section of the roof. The crates we’d seen were burning, flames licking toward the ceiling. The heat was intense.
We ran. Firing at shadows that moved in the smoke. Return fire zipped past my head, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
I felt a hot, burning tear in my thigh, right through the old wound. A stitch had definitely popped, maybe more. The pain was insane, but I ignored it. Pure adrenaline.
We hit the side door and busted out into the fresh air. The alarm was still blaring from inside, but the sound was muffled by the roar of the fire. We didn’t stop running, eating up the distance back to the fence line.
When we hit the bikes, I swung my leg over the seat and a lightning bolt of agony shot from my thigh to my brain, so sharp and sudden I saw stars. I gripped the handlebars until my knuckles cracked. Sucked air through my clenched teeth.
The engine turned over with a roar that felt like it was coming from inside my ribs.
We geared up and ripped out of our hiding spot. I expected us to ride straight into a hail of gunfire from pursuing vehicles.
We hit the main road, pushing the bikes hard, putting distance between us and the burning warehouse. I kept
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Chapter 90
checking my mirrors, waiting for the glare of headlights.
They never came.
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After a mile, then two, the absence of pursuit was more disturbing than any chase. I held up a clenched fist. and we pulled over onto the shoulder next to a field. The warehouse fire was a distant plume of black smoke on the horizon.
We killed the engines.
Monty was the first one to break the quiet, pulling off his helmet. His face was streaked with ash. “Anyone else feel like that might’ve been a setup?”
“Felt like we were fucking… expected,” Mason said, wiping a hand across his mouth.
“Viktor’s intel was wrong,” Link muttered. “Fifty men? That was a squad. A trap squad.”
“Or a diversion,” River added, his eyes on me. He didn’t say it, but I heard it anyway. *While we were out here, what was happening back there?*
Fuck.
Hailey. The clubhouse.
The Russians had been casing us. They knew about us. They knew we’d hit back.
And they knew we’d go for the big target. So they left the big target lightly guarded. A piece of bait. And stationed a professional fireteam to greet us. To keep us busy.
And while we were out here, dancing to their tune, blowing up an empty building and getting into a scrap with their B–team, where was Anatoly? What was his A–team doing?
The pain in my leg flared. My eyes landed on the blood seeping through my jeans, but I didn’t really see it.
This wasn’t a victory. It was a puppet show, and we’d been the stars.
I’d led us right into it. I’d made the call to push deeper. My need to know had tripped the alarm.
“We need to get back,” I said, my voice rough. “Now.”
No one argued. The same fear was on all their faces.
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
