curved upward.
“You’ve gotten to know me so well,” I said with amusement, but something had transformed in the dynamic between us since this morning, his brusqueness after the bike ride aside. We’d been bouncing ideas back and forth all afternoon with a familiarity that was starting to feel almost comfortable. Not an adjective I’d ever thought I’d associate with Bossypants here.
Snap, as always, was looking out for my well-being more than I tended to do. “We don’t know what guards might be stationed on the second floor there. Sorsha could end up jumping right into their midst.”
“I’ll take the same route she does,” Thorn said, shifting his shoulders as Pickle galivanted from one to the other. He shot the little creature a glower, but that didn’t stop him from reaching up to scratch Pickle’s chin. “They won’t be expecting us, and it’d be poorer tactics than the Company has ever shown to have many guards grouped at the same point without reason to anticipate entry. Between the two of us, we’ll tear right through any there.”
“As soon as we’ve got our brethren free, we’ll have even more strength in numbers,” Omen said.
I drummed my fingers on the table. “But remember, we don’t want to stick around long enough for the Company to bring in reinforcements, and we need all the data we can get about their operations. As soon as Ruse has the virus uploaded onto the first computer we find, we’ll want to grab any other computer equipment we see before he activates it. We can figure out what we’ll get out of their records when we’ve hauled the equipment back to the Everymobile.”
Omen nodded. “Snap, you determine which equipment is the most vital if we have to prioritize. Bow and Gisele, we’ll want you two wrangling the escapees and making sure they stay on track. But I think this should pull together well.” He paused and then lifted his gaze to catch my eyes. “You do understand that we won’t be leaving any humans alive in that place if we can help it, don’t you?”
A chill ran down my spine at the coolness with which he made that statement, but I’d been prepared for it. Slaughtering the building’s mortal occupants was the easiest way to ensure our own safety both during the attack and afterward. The more we reduced the number of people working for the Company of Light, the harder it’d be for the Company to keep running and the easier for us to disrupt any other parts of the organization we needed to destroy.
A quiver of queasiness passed through my stomach—and faded with the memory of the asshole who’d rammed his gun at Vivi, of the descriptions I’d gotten of Ellen’s injuries.
Anyone working in that facility knew they were torturing conscious beings that had all the self-awareness humans did, and had been party to who knew how many horrors inflicted on actual humans as well. I didn’t enjoy the idea of spilling their blood, but I wasn’t going to shed tears over their deaths either.
“If that’s what we’ve got to do, then we do it,” I said firmly. “I’ll fry a few of them if I have to.” If I could.
The hellhound shifter tipped his head approvingly and started going over a few more points with Thorn, who leaned over to peer at the screen. I forced down another mouthful of pad thai, but it dropped heavy into my stomach.
The last time we’d stormed one of the Company’s buildings, we’d had fewer people and less idea what to expect—but I’d also had less time for the enormity of what we were taking on to sink in.
I squeezed between Snap and the table to squirm off of the sofa, snatching a kiss from him as I passed. “Bathroom break. Don’t leave without me.”
As Gisele tittered at that unnecessary request, I ducked into the little RV bathroom and yanked the door shut behind me. The compact space was the only part of the vehicle its shadowkind owners hadn’t expanded or spruced up, probably because they had little use for it. I sat down on the closed toilet seat, one knee bumping the sliding door to the shower stall, and dragged in a deep breath.
I could do this. I could generate fire out of nothing—I’d done it plenty of times before, and tonight I’d do it again, as many times as I needed to. That was all there was to it.
I tugged a square of toilet paper off the