Shift

by Sidney Bristol

  Tori laughed and shook her head. Sisters. They were good for bodily threats, making inappropriate comments, and being a shoulder to lean on. What more could she ask for?

  The Bluetooth headset beeped in Tori’s ear, the comms going live early.

  “Power just flickered at Greenworks. Half the cameras are off-line.” Emery’s voice was all business, focused and devoid of emotion.

  Tori glanced at her sister. They turned right, heading away from the highway. It was too late to abort. They were almost there. The sky was streaked with yellow and orange while the rising sun painted the clouds a myriad of colors. The tall smokestacks of the Greenworks building stuck out against that backdrop, growing steadily bigger.

  “We are not deviating from the plan,” CJ said through the headset.

  Tori double-tapped her headset, activating the mute function. She could hear everything her team said, but they couldn’t hear her. Roni followed suit, glancing at her.

  “This is all too convenient,” Tori said.

  “What do we do?” Roni asked.

  “We can’t let them go in there without us.” There’d been half a dozen people on the camera feeds, and she didn’t know how many more might have arrived or were lying in wait.

  “Tell me what we’re doing, sis.” Roni turned and the entrance to the Greenworks facility came into view, maybe seventy-five yards ahead of them.

  The other armored car passed Roni. She dropped back, following the plan.

  “Stay with them. We might have to pull their asses out of the fire.” Tori cursed under her breath and sat forward. She jabbed the automatic window button and the humid air whipped in, bringing with it the salty tang of the ocean and the scent of freshly cut grass.

  Ahead of them, the first armored car made the ninety-degree turn, smashing through the security arm. Several tricked-out street rides sat at the ready, without drivers, in front of the docks.

  She glanced at the security shack when they passed it.

  The empty security shack.

  “Something’s not right.” She slapped at the Bluetooth, activating the line. “This is wrong. There isn’t anyone here.”

  The first car zoomed up the ramp, never once tapping its brakes.

  “I can’t see you,” Emery replied.

  The lead car hit the rolling metal gate. The car reversed, revealing a huge dent. The second car hit it. Metal screeched so loud Tori heard it over the roar of the engine. The first car rammed the door the instant the second reversed. The sound of metal things popping grated across Tori’s nerves.

  “Fuck, couldn’t they just open the damn door?” Roni yelled over the noise.

  The rolling door bent inward, the housing hanging from the roof. There was a car-shaped hole where the first armored car passed through. The second gunned the engine and shot through the same space, sparks flying from where it scraped by.

  “Oh God, don’t let the airbags deploy.” Roni didn’t punch the accelerator. She carefully maneuvered the Lancer through the space. Both girls cringed. The sagging door scraped the top of the car.

  They made it safely through the open space, no worse for wear save a few scratches to the exterior. An overturned cart and a few flattened boxes were all that was left in the wake of the other two cars.

  “Where are they?” Roni asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Tori leaned forward, gun gripped in her right hand. She could hear the sounds of brakes, a metallic ping, but no yells, no security, no other sign of human life.

  It was wrong. All of it. So why were they still going?

  “Eleventh is in sight,” Julian said. A second later brakes squealed down the hall.

  Tori accelerated through the first chamberlike room, into the second, then the third.

  “Fuck!”

  Roni yanked on the emergency brake and turned the wheel. The car slid sideways, coming to a full stop parallel to the door. The two armored cars sat nose to nose, the four men crouched behind the hoods.

  Tori dove out the passenger door, keeping low until she reached Aiden’s side.

  “What the hell?” she demanded as a shot went over their heads.

  “Eleventh,” he said.

  “Anyone else?” She took a knee, hunching to stay below the car.

  “Not that I see.” Aiden’s gaze remained locked on a target on the other side of the room.

  Too easy.

  She glanced behind them, but nothing moved.

  “Something’s wrong. This isn’t right,” she said, hoping the headset picked up her voice.

  “Shoot, goddamn it!” CJ yelled at her.

  The Eleventh had become street thugs. Raibel Canales was a sociopath, of that she had no doubt. But was that enough to kill them in a shootout? Was it worth risking her crew if she didn’t take a shot?

  Tori held the Glock in both hands, stretching her arms out along the hood of the car, lining up the sights.

  The Eleventh had taken cover behind a couple of metal barrels.

  A flash of movement slightly to the right caught her eye. The open doorway was dark, which made the neon quality of Raibel Canales’s hoodie stand out more.

  She exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The recoil reverberated up her arms. A blast of bullets followed, the sound so loud in the concrete space that her ears rang.

  One of the Eleventh drivers held up his hands, then another.

  Raibel Canales lay on the ground. As the gunfire ceased, she could hear his groan of pain. She couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for the bastard.

  “Don’t shoot,” a young Cuban yelled. He made her think of the guy Emery had encountered at the bodega.

  “What are you doing?” Canales groped around. Even from across the cavernous room she could see his face contorted in pain.

  “Call Smith,” she said, despite not being quite able to hear the headset from the residual deafness.

  CJ and Aiden leapt over the hoods of the cars, crossing the distance in ground-eating strides. Julian was hot on their heels, while John, Roni, and Tori held their positions, guns aimed to cover their companions. She didn’t take her gaze off the Eleventh, despite the skin between her shoulder blades crawling.

  “Can you hear me?” The voice was masculine, much like Emery’s, but her ears wouldn’t stop ringing.

  “Emery?” She shook her head. She circled the front of one car, crossing with John and Roni toward the others. She kicked guns out of the way, taking mental stock of how many men, the guns, and injuries.

  Where the hell were the Russian hit team and the Geezer?

  Aiden, Julian, and CJ slipped restraints onto the wrists of each member of the Eleventh, even Canales and the other injured guy she’d never seen before.

  “Where are the Russians?” CJ yelled in Canales’s face.

  Tori glanced over her shoulder, unable to ignore the sinking suspicion they’d fallen into a trap, yet there was nothing behind them. No one, save their team. There should at least have been weekend workers, someone to hear the racket. A janitor even.

  “They left.” Canales spat at CJ. Blood bathed the man’s right arm from a wound to the meaty part of his shoulder. Raibel would live, but if there was any justice in this world, he was going to jail for a long time.

  “Emery? You there?” She held her finger to the headset, pushing it farther into her ear.

  “They’re gone.” Emery’s voice was loud and he spoke slowly.

  “They’re what?” she asked.

  CJ’s spine straightened and Aiden glanced toward her.

  “They’re in a car headed west. Smith’s got them,” Emery said.

  Tori blew out a breath. It was over. CJ wasn’t getting blood, but it was over. No one else died. It would be okay.

  * * *

  Emery toggled between the cameras available to him at the Greenworks building. It would take time and too many hours to hack the various networks that controlled all of the red-light, teller, and security cameras up and down the streets a
round the compound. While there was a good chance the mystery man and hit team’s escape was getting caught on a dozen different streams, it meant nothing to Emery without the man-hours to get the video. Hell, a court order might be faster in the long run, but wouldn’t help him right now.

  “Suspect vehicle is in sight.”

  The hit team was going down.

  Emery glanced at the digital stream that represented the police scanner he’d hacked after a tip from Matt. The detective really was on their side. Emery just hoped it wasn’t career suicide for the man.

  “Proceed with caution.” Matt’s voice was louder, and from the echoing quality, Emery guessed he was inside the Greenworks building.

  “Can you see them?” Gabriel hovered over Emery’s shoulder, while Madison practically perched on his armrest. It made Emery’s skin crawl. He was not used to working under anyone’s eye save Kathy’s and CJ’s. Even Tori wasn’t as intrusive with her constant stream of discourse.

  “Hold on.”

  Emery muted his headset, changed the feeds again on the main display, and saw a dozen or more officers advance down the corridor toward where Tori and the others still held what was left of the Eleventh at gunpoint. Half a dozen had been picked up since their highway shootout last night. He might be wrong, but the Eleventh was on the verge of being wiped off the streets by the looks of it.

  The crew was silent over the headsets.

  “Is Aid—everyone okay?” Madison was holding it together. The woman had a knack for rolling with the punches, but the last couple of months were a lot for a civilian to take in.

  “Aiden’s okay,” he replied.

  His gaze dipped to the slender figure of Tori, her back to the camera, gun trained on one of the several unfortunate young men who had tossed their keys in with the Eleventh. Emery knew what a felony could do to a twenty-something like these guys. If it weren’t for the FBI, he’d have lost everything. He’d never have met Tori. Things were different for him. For the Eleventh drivers and thugs? There weren’t going to be many options.

  The minutes dragged on. The police stepped in, making the arrests, and the EMTs rushed in to see to the two injured toughs, one of whom he recognized as the young man who had confronted him outside Greenworks a few days ago. Most of Emery’s crew had their headsets muted, so it was hard to tell where they were in the process of Mi-randizing the gang members. He could catch bits and pieces through one or two live mics, like Tori’s from where she stood in the middle of it all.

  “What’s going on?” Gabriel pointed at CJ, who thrust his finger, poking John in the chest.

  Emery blew out a breath.

  “CJ’s pissed. He wants to go after the hit team.” Aiden pushed CJ’s hand aside. “Aiden’s telling CJ he called for the cop backup.”

  “Shit, this isn’t good,” Madison muttered.

  “What about the cruisers arresting the hit team? Did they catch them?” Gabriel asked.

  Emery glanced at the police scanner. There was plenty of chatter from the officers on the scene at Greenworks, but nothing from the cruisers in pursuit of the other vehicle.

  He grabbed his phone and punched Dial on the last number called. It rang. He watched Detective Smith’s figure on the security camera, but the man never once reached for his phone. The call went to voice mail after half a dozen rings.

  Emery dialed it again, switching it to speaker while he brought up a new browser window. He needed to see inside that cop car. They should have heard something from it by now. All cruisers were equipped with dash cams that fed video back in a slightly delayed feed. The Miami-Dade PD didn’t have the dollars to spend like Evers’s organization did on a top-notch security system. Regardless, Emery wanted to see the old guy’s mug on his screen.

  After a couple rings, the detective snatched the phone from his hip. They really were getting real-time video, which was damn impressive.

  “What?” Matt asked.

  “What’s the number of the cruiser that was following the other car?”

  “Fifty-one-S-two. Why?”

  “I want to know what’s going on with our suspects.”

  Matt turned his back and pitched his voice low. “This was too easy.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to know what’s going on. Those are my men out there.”

  “I know.”

  Emery had a sick feeling. They’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Had they by chance fallen into a trap? Not one that would spring shut on them, just distract them long enough for the real players to escape? But what sense did it make to lure them to the Greenworks building if the others were going to simply slip off? What was their target?

  He glanced at the clock.

  “Where is Evers being released?” Emery asked.

  “Don’t know. It was being kept secret,” Matt replied.

  It only took a few keystrokes to hack into the police network. When this was over, Emery might have to repay his debt in some man-hours beefing up their system. He muttered to himself as he bounced from page to page, getting closer to the information he wanted.

  “Emery, what are you doing?” Madison asked.

  “Who’s that?” Matt asked.

  “Madison and Gabriel,” Emery replied.

  “Madison?” Matt repeated.

  For a brief while, Emery had suspected Detective Matt Smith of harboring feelings for Madison. At least, that was how it appeared from the attention he paid her, and the police patrol he assigned to shadow her, at least until Aiden stepped in and cut the cops off from who they’d hoped would be their star witness. For all Madison knew, she was no star witness to hang a case on. Just a woman caught up at the wrong time and place.

  “Hi, Matt.” Madison’s voice was tense.

  “Hey, your man’s here. He treating you okay?” Matt turned toward Aiden, still embroiled in a heated one-on-one with CJ.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Good. I’d hate to have to kick his ass.”

  “Please don’t.” Madison chuckled.

  Emery withheld his thoughts on that matter. He’d had his ass handed to him a number of times before he could ever hold his own against Aiden or Julian. The kind of training those men had beaten into them was the stuff that kept them alive when the shit got real. He didn’t think Matt Smith had ever faced anything that bad, even on the streets of Miami.

  “I’m not hearing anything from those cruisers,” Gabriel said, keeping his voice low.

  Yeah, Emery had noticed that. Not a peep. That couldn’t be good.

  “Got it,” Emery said.

  “What did you get?” Matt asked before anyone else.

  “Where they’re releasing Evers.”

  They’d known Michael Evers was being housed at the Dade Correctional Institution south of Miami, but thanks to the news coverage, not to mention enemies, he couldn’t just be released from custody. He would be released at a different location, probably into the arms of friends, security, and lawyers who would keep his nose clean until trial.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Matt asked.

  Emery didn’t bother to reply, not when he was on a hunt. He sliced through the layers of police security, hacking his way without finesse. The dash cam videos were kept on an external server. Once he had the IP address, he didn’t need the police access point. He dropped out of their system and after a few short seconds and one password-breaking program later he was into hundreds of files.

  It took another couple of valuable seconds to orient himself to the way the files were stored. He skipped through the years to the current date, down into the unit until he found the fifty-one-S-two car. A supervisor? Smith must have pulled anyone and everyone he could get his hands on.

  The feed blipped once before filling a bottom monitor.

  “Oh my God.” Madison turned.

  “Fuck,” Gabriel muttered.

  Emery’s stomach rolled.

  “What? What is it?” Matt asked.

  “
This was a setup. We were supposed to focus all our attention on the Greenworks site. They’re either about to hit you, or I bet they’re going after Evers.” Emery skipped through the other cars in the unit, discarding those that showed cops on patrol or that were off the clock.

  “How? Where are they going?”

  “Does dispatch monitor the dash cam feeds?” Emery asked.

  “No. What is going on?” Smith demanded.

  “Shit.” Gabriel slapped the back of Emery’s chair. “The guys in that car were done hitman-style.”

  “What?” Matt’s voice cracked, rising at the end, from shock no doubt.

  Emery pulled up another dash cam. This car didn’t have officers in the front seats. Two men in navy button-up shirts that could never pass for police uniforms navigated the car. Only two? There should be three.

  “I’m sorry, man, it looks like what’s left of the hit team and this old guy took out the officers.” Gabriel narrated the feeds as Emery searched for the other two Russians. Matt got on the horn with dispatch and radioed in the missing cruiser. Chances were, the officers were already dead, but maybe they’d get lucky and someone was still alive.

  “There.” Gabriel hunched lower over Emery’s shoulder.

  The older man was still in his black suit, while the third hit man drove another cruiser. The GPS feed of the vehicle was easy enough to skim and place on a map in real time.

  “They’re headed for Evers.” Emery glanced at the clock. “He’s being released in twenty-three minutes. At a private residence. Madison, I need you to sit here and watch the feeds. If anything changes, if they do anything, tell me.”

  He jerked open a drawer, thrusting the Bluetooth headsets at Gabriel and Madison.

  To Madison’s credit, she didn’t balk or shy away from the responsibility. She sat down in the seat he vacated and blew out a breath, staring at the screens. He reached over her and killed the feed on the dead cops. They were going to have enough on their hands without the weight of the dead on their shoulders.

  “What the hell is going on?” CJ’s voice roared over the channel.

  “Update him,” Emery said to Madison. He ushered Gabriel out of the security office. “Get some guns. I’ll get us a ride.”