wear something fireproof. Also, it was apparently important they all be dressed the same.
And as Mira had pointed out, this wasn’t about looking good. It was about staying alive.
Kelsey hadn’t known there were silent helicopters, but the one they were in didn’t make more sound than a breeze made in the muggy heat of summer.
But it wasn’t the dead of summer. Winter’s cold curled around even the shapeshifters like an icy claw — but it didn’t seem to faze the dragon shifter. He was raw heat as she sat in his lap, attached to him in some kind of demented double-harness. They’d be parachuting in, and he’d insisted she’d be safest with him. Her men hadn’t argued, but she’d much rather be in any of their laps.
She heard go-go-go-go-GO in her headset, and she saw Panda, Mira, and Jones jump one after another. She and Aaron were next, and she knew her men were just behind them. They had nine people in all, and were planning to take over a facility ran by more than thirty people.
She jammed the roof cameras and sensors as soon as she was close enough to do so, using equipment strapped to her left forearm. Fifteens seconds later, they landed on the roof, folded and rolled the parachutes in mere seconds, and stuck them in a bag. Aaron hooked the harness that still held Kelsey to his chest to a rope with a hook Mira handed them. Kelsey used her vampire claws to cut a hole in a glass panel over the indoor sunroom and garden while Panda set the rope into a piling around some rooftop mechanical equipment. Her stomach seemed to stay on the roof when Aaron jumped and levitated them down, pretending to use the rope though he was barely putting weight on it. She assumed he didn’t want people to know he could fly in this form.
As soon as she and Aaron’s feet touched the floor, he disconnected the harness and she stepped away from him. Panda and Mira joined them, and they headed for the shielded room on this level. Most of the computer equipment was in the basement, but this computer was on the highest floor, in a secret room off the facility director’s personal suite.
The other five were going in through the garage. They’d raise the alarm down there and would be fighting for their lives while she did what she could do with this fucking offline computer.
It was two in the morning here, and the director was in his bed, exactly where he was supposed to be. Mira was in the room and on top of him less than a second after Kelsey used the retinal scanner — she’d hacked in and put her eye into the database before they’d left American soil, and had re-targeted all alerts about new registrations to come to her, rather than the director and his top people.
She heard the director’s heart speed up. Panic and terror filled the room, and then the scent of urine and shit. And then the director’s heart stopped. Mira had killed him. Kelsey had known the plan was to disable or kill, but witnessing it was a completely different matter.
But she had a job to do. She stopped breathing because the room stank of death and terror and it was too much for her to deal with. Instead, she focused on what came next — getting past the wall and into the hidden room.
She walked to the wall and felt around, trying to figure out how to access the room. It took three precious minutes to find and expose the console, which then required both retina and palm access. Her information was in the database with the correct access permissions, so getting in wasn’t a problem.
And then she was sitting in front of the computer, and the easy stuff was behind her. This wasn’t going to be a piece of cake.
The three people with her turned their back to her, as she’d requested. She couldn’t work with people staring at her. She plugged her smartphone into the single USB port and went to work.
Fabio went low, Collosa went high, and Eunice stood at his normal height. It was how they always entered a room when people inside might want to shoot them. Or worse.
Thanks to Kelsey, Fabio’s palm had opened the door to get them into the garage, which was filled with primarily snowmobiles and tank-type vehicles. One sensor was purposefully left alive in this room,