than 2300."
The plan was to be in and out before the sun rose the next morning.
Huntley nodded his understanding. As the youngest alphas, Pierce had been uncertain the twins were ready to lead when the rest of us joined together to support the pack. They'd been a mystery from the beginning, two snarling alpha pups showing up out of nowhere, skinny and dirty. Jagger's scar hadn't been a scar at that point; it had been an angry scab that wrapped around the front of his neck from ear to ear. They'd been prickly and distrustful but fiercely protective of one another.
The twins had proven Pierce wrong immediately, showcasing an ability to focus that, when partnered with the bond the two already shared, made them unstoppable.
I should've told Storri that. He might've felt a little better about letting me go if I had.
I knew he and my daughters were safe in the hotel. Watching Diesel secure the perimeter was the closest I'd come to seeing the old Diesel. He'd been in his element, using his skill to protect the people he cared about. Nothing would enter the woods from the outside without them knowing. He'd installed a chip in the pack's vehicles, Hummer included, that sent a signal to the explosives receiver that would allow them to pass over the barrier unharmed. We could go in and out as we pleased.
Rigging the perimeter was something we should've done long before this moment. The hotel was our new home; the forest around it was our pack lands. Our old home was gone, our old pack lands destroyed, and nothing would bring any of that back. But that didn't mean we couldn't have some of that again.
We drove the remainder of the route in silence. There wasn't anything for us to confirm. We knew the plan.
It was dark by the time Jagger cut the engine and Huntley jumped outside to camouflage the vehicle from above. We'd parked east of the business campus in between two factory warehouses. Both were closed for the day and wouldn't open until we were long gone. We hit the sidewalk in a run, sprinting the entire way to the vantage point the twins had discovered the first time.
We were meant to assess the situation, confirm conditions were consistent with what we expected and then move forward, but immediately I could see we'd be switching things up. I'd only ever saw pictures of the Seattle Portal campus but in each of them, the place had been deserted.
Now, bright floodlights illuminated the soldiers and vehicles moving in every direction. I spotted a helicopter on the roof of the nearest building, the blades still spinning slowly like the occupants had only just arrived.
"Dammit!" Jagger hissed. "None of these fucking people were here before."
"We planned for this," I reminded him, though the contingency I spoke of had been in the case that there were a few more people on the campus when we arrived. This was much more than a few.
Huntley tracked a squadron of soldiers marching from the parking lot to a building closer toward the middle of campus. "It's the middle of the night, and they have a goddamned helicopter. They aren't even pretending to be an actual company anymore."
No one would mistake the scene in front of us for the regular goings-on of an investment company. But if Portal no longer thought they needed to hide what they were, we had bigger problems. They'd mobilized, and it looked like they were clearing the place out, just like we'd worried about.
"Look, to the north." I jerked my forehead to a line of cars that looked like they were driving behind the building and then disappearing. There wasn't an underground parking structure on this block.
Huntley hissed, but it was a happy, excited sound. "That must be the entrance."
Before, we'd assumed Portal was working underground because there'd been no sign of them aboveground. That had changed, clearly, but the information we wanted, including our target, David Grouse, might still have been inside. "Lay the decoy here."
Huntley pulled the distraction device from his pack and began strapping the unit to a nearby tree. When they were finished, we moved out as a unit, sprinting along a shadowy path around the campus toward the north side.
Behind us, a cement retaining wall overgrown with ivy blocked the outside world from seeing inside. Nothing but the bushes we crouched behind blocked our view, but I still wasn't sure what I was seeing. The line of tactical