written on the side, fucking Shlox. Another damn tranquilizer that had made a lightning-fast transition into a street drug. He didn’t know what effect Halo-Xazine would have on him, but he knew it probably wouldn’t be doing him any good.
Move, he told himself, and keep moving until you drop. You can worry about the damn Halox later, if you make it out of here alive.
He slid the pin out of the grenade and, without hesitation, lobbed it behind him to keep whoever had shot him from doing it twice. The concussion grenade landed with a blinding flash of light and an explosion of sound. He kept moving, rounding the front of the GTO, picking up speed and pulling another flash bang from his pocket and tossing it to the far end of the garage, past the woman, to land at the bottom of the stairs. His aim was impeccable, and all hell broke loose on impact with more blinding light and explosions, but no shrapnel. He wasn’t going to detonate anything too damn dangerous until he knew exactly where Scout was being held or until he knew Jack had her out of the building.
Then these boys were on their own.
But not the woman.
He shot a quick glance in her direction.
No. Not the wild thing.
In all the mayhem of exploding light and deafening noise, she’d dropped to the floor and was trying to scramble back to her feet, her hands over her ears, her face stark with fear and shock.
Right. He was such a great guy—and she looked like a deer in the headlights, like she didn’t know which direction to go next.
He did.
In two steps, he was by her side, lifting her off the floor, and in another two, he was back at the GTO, shoving her inside. Flash bangs wouldn’t kill her, but they’d been specifically designed to disorientate and scare the hell out of people. In her case, they were doing their job, but the guy at the top of the stairs didn’t look too damn fazed, and the other guy, the one coming out of the office, the one slipping a rifle sling over his shoulder, didn’t look too damn scared or disorientated, either. The first guy had drawn his pistol, and both of them were moving quickly down the stairs to the garage’s main floor, their faces hard set, their intentions clear.
They were looking for him, but he was already on his way out, up a staircase on the east end of the building to the tenth floor, to get Scout.
Time to rock and roll, Jack thought, hearing the explosions and raising his AR-15 carbine. He put one shot into each of the two security cameras on the near side of 738 Steele Street’s roof, then, with an easy, smooth grace, slipped over the side of the Bruso-Campbell Building on the zip line. Seconds after Con’s first flash bang went off, he’d crossed the alley and swung himself over the low wall on Steele Street’s roof.
Con’s diversion and his own speed were his two greatest assets, and Jack didn’t waste time. He ran across the roof, passing an odd seating arrangement made up of a couple of old lawn chairs and a wooden crate bolted to a ragged square of Astroturf, making sure to trigger the proximity alarm before he reached the metal door that led down into the building—a very secure door.
He had his charge ready, packed it on the lock, inserted the detonator, and headed back over the side of the roof, using the collapsible grappling hook to secure his rappelling line. The building had thirteen floors, and he dropped two floors before stopping his descent just shy of the tenth-floor balcony.
“Alpha Two, ready,” he said into his radio.
“Alpha One, on your count.”
He could hear Con running, the sound of his boots on metal stairs, and knew the boss was heading in his direction, right on time.
“Roger,” he said. With the security cameras out, once he blew the door, the Steele Street boys were going to have to come looking if they wanted to know what was happening on the roof. And while they were hunting him there, he was going to be three floors down, rescuing the one woman on the face of the earth who was guaranteed to give him hell, a long-legged, slim-hipped, mixed-race beauty with the face of an angel, a right hook to match her righteous roundhouse kick, and a jerk boyfriend from Holland named Karl.