Dade looked over to her. He seemed to sense what she was thinking, because he gave her a wicked grin.
“If Crispin has Niall, we need to act on that intel before he moves him to a different location.” Mina stared at the three of them, Arden, Dade, and Saben. “I don’t like sending you in alone, and if I had a choice, I’d take more time and figure out something else. But with the time crunch, it’s our only option.”
Arden wasn’t upset that they were going in with a small group. Mina couldn’t invade Crispin’s business without declaring war. Which meant the three of them would be on their own, just the way Arden wanted it. She’d much rather do a job with a smaller group she could trust than with people she was still unsure of.
She pushed herself away from the wall. “We don’t need you to babysit. We’ll be fine.”
After last night, Arden felt determination knot inside her. There was a job to do, and she was going to execute it with precision.
“It’s not babysitting. It’s called working as a team,” Mina said.
“We can’t monitor you,” Venz said to Arden. “Crispin will have anti-tracking in his building. If we use a comm signal, he’ll be able to pick it up.”
“If anything goes wrong, get the hell out of there,” Mina said. “If you get in trouble, we won’t be there to bail you out. I’d rather lose Niall and figure out something else than lose the three of you.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve been in worse scrapes.” Arden was excited to go and vent her frustration into this plan. She couldn’t help but feel like this was a big game of chess. Except Arden not only didn’t know the rules, she didn’t know the players. That had to change.
It didn’t take long for them to jack three speeders. It was simple, and easy and exhilarating. Arden missed this. She needed the constant adrenaline rush to feel alive. Driving a speeder after so long was a thrill. The wind pulled at her hair as she darted through the static cloud to their destination.
Across the city, they ditched the speeders. They needed to go up. Entering one of the many buildings, they used the internal lift to reach Level Seven, and then exited a block from their destination.
Crispin’s building looked like it had been retrofitted with reinforced steel and moonglass. It appeared newer than the others, enough to draw attention and to caution anyone targeting it. Signs out front proclaimed it private property. Crispin’s symbol was on the center of all of them. That alone was enough to turn even the stickiest thief away.
It was both a place of business and residential apartments. Mina assured them that Crispin had his private quarters here. If he had Niall, this was where he would most likely be holding him.
There were a lot of people moving about. The building was surprisingly busy for this time of night. Not to mention the guards they could see through the moonglass doors.
They stood across the street, weighing their options.
“I say we go in from below,” Arden said. “There has to be a way inside. Someone like Crispin would have at least five emergency exits in case things went bad. We have to be able to find at least one of them.”
Saben studied the other buildings surrounding Crispin’s. “It’s a solid plan.”
“He’s going to have safety measures,” Dade said.
“I’m not worried. I made it into the Sky Tower to visit you. No locked or manned building is going to keep me out.” Her thoughts immediately went to Mina’s proposed job of breaking into the CRC, and she hoped that remained true.
“Such arrogance,” Saben said dryly.
Arden laughed. She moved to give him a fist bump, and he obliged her. He wasn’t a bad guy. Maybe a little growly and stoic, but the big goon was growing on her. Plus, he always had Dade’s back, so that had to count for something.
They consulted the schematic Venz had provided one last time before suiting up by pulling the hoods over their heads, tucking their hair inside. Masks were next, followed by their air-breathers that would modulate their voices and keep them from breathing the gas they’d set off. Mina had requested they not kill anyone unless it was necessary.
Arden double-checked her weapons, making sure they were all in working order and strapped where she needed them. She raised a hand, pointing her finger and circling. The signal they should head out.
It had taken them a full fifteen minutes to figure out how to get inside and another twenty minutes to work their way through the lock system without detection. This job was taking way too long. They’d be caught if it took much longer.
Arden was on edge. Her body thrummed, and her skin felt itchy. She cracked her neck and pulled out her phaser, going in first. She rounded the doorway, moving her phaser up to shoulder level and scanning the area.
After making sure the room was empty, she signaled that they were clear, and the other two came in. Saben made sure to close and lock the door, but not rearm it.
Arden stayed on alert. She knew the penalty for taking things at face value and letting her guard down. People she cared about could die. Anything could happen. And she would not let these two down. Not on her watch.
The focus made her head ache. She was holding her back so stiffly that pain flashed across her shoulders. She took a breath and forced her muscles to relax. A mantra whispered through her mind: Stay alert, stay limber, breathe.
They checked and cleared the lower floors and all the business offices. They tried to sneak through and not engage. Stealth was key. It was important to delay setting off the alarms for as long as possible. When they had to, they used sleeping gas. For the most part, it was pretty easy to slip through. The people they ran into were workers, not muscle.
Niall wasn’t there, not that they’d expected him to be, because that would have been too easy. Nothing was ever easy. She pushed out a frustrated breath and set aside her twinge of frustration. Each place they checked meant time off their clock.
Arden would find him.
They finished off a floor of offices. Dade took up position at the exit on the far side of the corridor. He checked out the last two doors, leaning into both with his phaser pointed out. Then turned back. “We’ve been here too long. Either we finish searching this floor, or call it and move on.”
He was right. Time was running on fumes. They’d looked over two of the possible five locations Venz and Nastasia had pointed out. But now they had to make some choices. They couldn’t clear them all.
Arden hated indecision, considered it a weak character trait. So when she was faced with it, there was a lot of added self-loathing attached. She looked at Saben, who was a pretty valuable statistician. “Ideas?”
“Maybe Crispin is keeping him close,” Saben said.
Dade nodded once. “We work our way up to the luxury wing.” He referred to the heavily secured area where Mina had said that Crispin’s private rooms were located.
Arden frowned, but she was willing to go along with them. She didn’t think it would be smart for Crispin to keep Niall near him. It spoke to friendship, or at least social ties. And she couldn’t remember ever meeting Crispin before she’d gone to the boxing club with Dade.
Still, she agreed. If she couldn’t make up her own mind, it was best to listen to the majority. Saben had some history with Crispin. It made sense to follow his lead.
She knew they were in the right area of the building when they reached a corridor with reinforced doors. The halls were empty, and the hum of the air filtration was the only sound. It looked upscale, though not quite as posh as the Sky Towers.
There were a lot of rooms. A camera was mounted on each end of the main hall facing in. As soon as they stepped past the doorway, it would catch them and the countdown would begin. Then they wouldn’t be able to come back since their cover would be blown. Arden hoped that Niall was here, or they’d come all this way for nothing.
She looked at the others. After they both nodded back that they were ready, she held up three fingers and then counted down.
Arden shot out both cams.<
br />
They moved quickly, checking the doors on both sides. They skipped the ones that were locked and sleep-gassed those people in rooms that were open. It took almost forty-five seconds to clear the hall. They ended up with two locked doors.
Arden looked between them. She could feel her heart pump. Niall was here. Intuition whispered to her. He was behind one of these doors. She knew it. Nothing but the beating of her heart and the trust of her instincts held her in check.
“These locks will take almost a minute to crack each,” Saben said, pulling out his datapad and a set of connectors. “We’ll only have time for one.”
Arden felt her frustration well up. It pulsed in her head. Not now, not when she was so close.
“Where are you, Niall?” she mumbled to herself. She could hear the weird echo of the voice modulator bounce her words back at her in a fragmented translation.
They both looked at her. Waiting to see which door she’d pick.
She took a deep breath and pointed. “That one.”
Saben didn’t hesitate. Just walked over and hooked his datapad to the scanner outside the door. His fingers flew on his pad.
Dade turned to man the door they’d come through that led to the next hall. He blew out the sensor pad to disengage the door. Then pointed his phaser at the closed door in anticipation of it opening. Anyone who came through at this point would be someone here to kill them.
Arden took up position behind Saben, watching the hall on the other side. There could be other entrances. Or they could have missed someone with their sweep. Stress, anxiety, anticipation, adrenaline—it all flooded her. Her body spinning on overloaded stimulus.
Behind her the sensor pad beeped, and she heard the door slide open.
Saben disengaged his datapad and walked into the room. Dade turned from his position and then followed Saben. And Arden made another quick sweep before turning into the room as well.
She hit the button on the other side, sealing in the door. And then used her phaser to blast the scanner. It wouldn’t keep anyone out, but it would slow them down.
The room was small, but nice. It looked normal: a bed, a side table, a chair. The window faced the outside of the skyway. The dark static cloud swirled beyond the moonglass. It was nice if one didn’t count that there was a lock outside the door instead of on the inside.
The first thing she saw was a lump on the bed.
“Is it him?” she asked. She could barely get the words past the thickness that had lodged itself in her throat.
Dade was already there, moving the covers back and rolling the person over. “Yes.”
Relief made her legs shaky. Arden slipped her phaser away. She ran over, edging herself past Dade.
Niall looked sick. His eyes were red and unfocused. His lips were cracked and bleeding. His skin was bleached a deathly white except for the purple bruises that seemed to cover 70 percent of him. He’d been beaten, badly.
Rage filled the space that adrenaline had vacated. She had to remember who had done this to him. Crispin had him for less than a day, and these bruises looked older. Crispin had put him in a decent bed, with clean sheets. There was a full water cup on the side table. The damage was all Lasair’s doing. Uri’s fault. And he’d pay.
Between Arden and Dade, they got Niall up. They held him still while Saben stood behind Niall and began to strap Niall’s back to Saben’s chest. For as thin as Niall was, his dead weight was heavy and unwieldy. It didn’t help that his body shook with unchecked spasms.
Words tumbled from his mouth in what sounded like mumbled protest. They were difficult to understand, just strings of punctuated sounds. Until she made out one word he kept repeating, “Help.”
It broke her heart. She loved him even though he frustrated the crap out of her. They disagreed on almost everything. Though she saw his point of view, even if she didn’t like the decisions he made.
At one time, they’d been close. But that had been long ago. She could remember wanting his approval even if she couldn’t pinpoint when that had changed. It was a slow progression with each little decision that snowballed into bigger and bigger things, and eventually it had ended in hurt and distrust.
In spite of that, they were still family. Raised together in poverty and taught to claw their way out. At an early age, they had to make decisions that were morally gray. She understood why he’d chosen the path he did. It was a little darker than hers, a little more dirtied by anger and revenge. She couldn’t blame him for that.
But she also knew that she couldn’t support Niall’s placing the blame for his problem on others. Everyone could choose better paths no matter where they came from. Niall included. That was a truth she carried in her heart. And maybe someday she could convince Niall of the same.
The door opened behind them. It was silent, but she felt the push of air as the door retracted.
Arden swung around, her heart in her throat.
The Twins slunk in. They gave identical smiles, full of teeth and mirth and deadly promise.
She felt that sinking free fall in her belly. Fear knotted in her throat. But she locked herself into place. Finding that center of calm peace and instinct.
“What do—”
“We have—”
“Here?” the Twins said in singsong. Their eyes scanned back and forth, seeming to glow in the darkness.
“We have been looking forward to this—”
“For quite some time.”
There was a gleefulness about them that set Arden on edge. They wanted a fight. And a fight they’d get. Arden was thankful that the Twins didn’t carry phasers, or this would turn out to be a different kind of fight than she needed it to be.
She immediately sprang into action, pulling her knives from her hips. Perhaps she should have just pulled a phaser and shot them, but her goal wasn’t to kill them. If that happened, there would be an all-out war with Crispin. And Arden knew it would be with her, not Mina. Which wasn’t the sort of muck she wanted to wade into just then.
She needed to keep control of the situation. The knives would allow that. Forcing the Twins to get close to her, so that she could keep them on the far side of the room, focused on her, and away from Saben, Dade, and Niall.
She yelled at Dade, “Get us out of here.”
Then she rushed the Twins.
It turned out that the Twins were nearly impossible to handle on her own. One would have been an even match. Both of them together had Arden’s body groaning within seconds. They forced her to react quicker, move faster. She struggled, trying to minimize the damage they inflicted on her while she guessed at their next moves.
She felt the pull and release of her muscles, and the grinding of her bones as she took hits. Arden could feel herself slowing. She needed to do something soon to disable them, or this would all go to hell.
A knife swiped her forearm. The cut seared, the burning blazing through her body. It was agony. Yet it cleared her head. Focused her.
Dade worked on the window of thick moonglass behind her. She could see his reflection every time she turned to fend off another swipe of a knife from the devil Twins. He worked quickly, though it felt like much longer.
Saben, with Niall strapped to his chest, moved away from both the fighting and the window. He kept his phaser pointed at the Twins, but he didn’t shoot, allowing Arden to keep them busy her way.
“Fire,” Dade yelled.
Arden had just seconds to duck away before the explosives he’d placed blew the window apart. Shards of moonglass rained down on them like tiny stars. They cut into the Twins’ exposed flesh and lodged themselves in her synth-suit.
Saben was the first to move. He fell backward out the window with Niall.
One of the Twins landed a blow to the back of her right arm while Arden was distracted. She hissed, nearly losing her grip on the knife in that hand.
“Go,” she yelled at Dade as she spun and kicked the Twin in the face. She felt the satisfying crunch as her boot hit bone. H
opefully she’d broken something and they wouldn’t look so perfectly similar anymore.
Arden didn’t see Dade leave. Just trusted that he’d obeyed before she pivoted and ran. She took a flying leap, jumping out of the window and into the empty space beyond.
There was the rush of wind as it blew by her, sounding like a tunnel inside her hood. The floors zoomed by in a blur. She fell Level by Level, gaining speed.
Arden let go of the knives. She struggled to reach the cuffs latched onto her wrists. The air current fought against her. She couldn’t bring her hands together. She let out a sound of rage and pushed hard, feeling the strain in her arms and back.
Her finger flicked the switch, illuminating the gold wristlets with a white glow. Inside the slimline pack, her light wings unfolded. They caught the air, working to glide her to a slow descent. Her cuffs tethered her to the light so that she could steer her wings where she wanted to go.
Now in control, she twisted her body downward into a dive. Folding the wings back so that she sped up and darted through the deepness of the static cloud. Then she opened the wings just slightly so that there would be drag as she guided herself to their meeting spot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dade leaned back, avoiding the others. Roan, Coco, Annem, and he were sitting in the cargo hold of a stolen electro-van, as old and nondescript as they could find. He was uncomfortable, which didn’t help his focus. Still, a numbing calm that didn’t seem quite real stole over him. He wasn’t ready for this. But really, when would he be? Going home had never been in his plans.
Mina was in the front, driving. And Venz was on comm. However, at the moment he wasn’t speaking to them over the live feed as they weren’t to their destination point yet. The plan was to get in and out of the Sky Tower before the sensors expired. Hopefully, when they left, it would be difficult to figure out exactly how they’d let themselves in. To pull it off, they had to get into the subbasement of the building to hook up into the electrical operation so that Venz could then piggyback into the security system.
The Stolen Sky (Split City Book 2) Page 17