stared up at something sitting atop the awning, heavy enough to sag the fabric.
The team’s roller bag.
Gray and Seichan closed the distance.
One target must have heard something and turned. Gray lifted his rifle’s muzzle and squeezed a three-round burst into the man’s chest. The impact at such close range knocked the man off his feet and across a table. Seichan slashed out as the other spun around. Blood flew from a clean slice across his neck.
As the man fell with a gurgling cry, shots were fired at them from inside the hotel. Gray dropped to a knee and laid down sporadic bursts through the door to hold back those inside. More rounds fired from above, pelting through the awning and ricocheting off the stones. Gray didn’t move, knowing his position was shielded under the canopy from the view above.
To the side, Seichan danced through the gunshots.
She reached the sag in the awning, leaped to a one-legged balance atop a chair, and slashed high with her blade. She continued onward as the slice in the fabric overhead tore further. The roller bag toppled out of the hole and crashed to the table behind her.
Gray emptied the last of his stolen rifle’s magazine, tossed the weapon aside, and lunged for the case. He yanked it to him, as an assailant burst out of the door, taking advantage of the sudden halt in Gray’s suppressive fire—only to be met by Seichan’s knife as she whipped the blade, letting it fly from her fingertips. It struck his right eye hard enough to snap his head back.
Gray hauled the bag up in one arm and hugged it to his chest.
Seichan joined him, her eyes flashing brightly. Together they ran under the awning and burst out into the crowd. They followed the flow away from the hotel and back to the sedan.
Gray reached it first.
The front seat was empty. Seichan touched a crisp bullet hole through the driver’s-side window. Gray spotted blood splatters across the leather headrest. He cursed himself for abandoning the two men. He prayed they were still alive, perhaps captured, not bleeding out in some alley.
He shared a guilty look with Seichan.
But there was nothing to be done about it right now. Knowing their attackers could still be near, they retreated into the crowd. He looked back. Maria and the others had fled in the opposite direction. He plotted how to regroup with them and get somewhere safe.
Then a thunderous boom echoed over the water, loud enough to be felt in the chest. Gray froze, as did many of those around him. Faces turned upward. Overhead a huge flower of fire burst across the night sky, blazing in crimson and gold.
The fireworks show had begun.
9:44 P.M.
Mac stood with the others in a shadowy corner of the dockside plaza. He cradled his left arm. Each blast in the sky made his shoulder throb. His gaze searched the packed festivalgoers filling the square for any new sign of threat.
Half a mile away, emergency lights glowed and spun over by the hotel, but out here by the cruise dock, few paid any attention. Gazes were fixed to the skies. Music blared all around, fireworks boomed over the water, and the sound of merriment abounded.
Such was human nature.
As he and the others fled from the hotel earlier, the panic around them had bled away, diluted by the press of the crowd and weakened by the growing distance. The firefight had only been witnessed by those closest. Farther away, few gave the commotion any notice, likely attributing it to partying that had gotten out of hand. Even those who had fled alongside them had eventually slowed, stopping and looking back, feeling safe enough to go from potential victim to gawking bystander.
Then the fireworks had started, and all was seemingly forgotten.
Though maybe not entirely.
He sensed a tension in the crowd, a herd of cattle on edge. In between the booming blasts of the fireworks, the sharper cry of sirens cut through the crowd. The noise drew eyes toward the twirling lights. Many others whispered in ears and pointed that way, too. The news of what had happened was spreading through the crowd, likely amplified with each telling.
Mac shook his head, missing the quiet and isolation of Greenland’s glaciers.
Next to him, Maria lowered her burner phone, flinching at another boom from above. She waved for Mac and Father Bailey to lean closer. “Gray and Seichan will be here in a few minutes. We need to be ready.”
Gray had already called