And then Chad forgot all about her, because up on the big screen, Dave’s face appeared, eyes closed, head resting on a steel gurney. A wave of hatred washed over Chad, making him clench his fists.

  “This man,” Victoria said, “assaulted and killed the guards, then escaped our top-secret facility forty-eight hours ago. He’s extremely dangerous, and on top of that, mentally unstable.”

  What? Chad was grateful his mask covered his incredulous grimace.

  “We’ve spent two nights searching for him, but we haven’t been able to cover enough ground. Some of you have participated in the search, and others will join in tonight, in order to capture this individual and return him to his ward, where he belongs.”

  Ward? The lie she was weaving for the gullible men around him turned Chad’s blood cold, and he had to force himself to stand still.

  “Once again, remember that under no circumstances are you to attempt to capture this man on your own. If you discover him, all you have to do is report it to one of the officers and to follow him inconspicuously, until our specialists arrive and take the matters into their hands. Here’s the area where we suspect the perpetrator can be found.” She pointed up at the screen, where a detailed map of Brooklyn appeared. A big circle was highlighted in green, and Chad narrowed his eyes at the center—headquarters.

  “We’ll proceed as usual. Please split into groups of three to five people and stop by the table in the back, where you will get detailed instructions and will be assigned a sector of the search area. If you have any questions, please save them for the officers who will be giving out the instructions. Good luck.”

  Chad’s heart gave a protesting jolt when Victoria stepped off the podium and disappeared in the dark. That’s it? There’s nothing else we can do? He watched the other Commando, the man who had been standing silently with her, cross the room and join another officer at a big table by the exit.

  “Bus three, to the table! Bus three leaves first!” one of the officers raised his voice, causing a few annoyed mutters in the crowd. People stepped back, allowing others to approach the table.

  They were among the first ones to grab their papers. Chad’s eyes widened at the list of Dave’s cars—the Commandos had done their homework—and he headed to the exit. He’d only made a few steps when the familiar room with the open door showed to his left. There was still no one inside.

  Before he could stop himself, he grabbed the man next to him by the jacket and crouched, pretending to have dropped something.

  “What the?” It turned out to be Patrick, his blue eyes wide.

  “Quiet. See the room to my left? There’s no one inside. I’m gonna go look around, and you keep an eye on the bus. Come get me when it’s about to leave.”

  He didn’t give Patrick a chance to object as he got up and strode to the room that beckoned to him with its glowing screens, empty chair, and stacks of papers. Chad didn’t look back as he closed the door behind him, and only then did he dare release the air from his lungs.

  Think, he ordered his brain, looking around the small, dark room. His gaze flicked up to the ceiling, checking all four corners, but there were no cameras. How ironic, he thought, peering at the three monitors before him.

  To his disappointment, the images were useless. Just a bunch of halls and corridors, most of them empty at the moment. He saw the three buses, but even with a night-vision camera, there was nothing else for him to see. The two Commandos that had driven them there stood smoking behind the bus.

  Chad turned to the table on his left, when the door creaked behind him.

  His heart skipped a beat before freezing in his chest.

  “Who the hell are you?” a male voice sounded, and Chad swallowed hard.

  He turned around. “Good, you’re here,” he said, keeping his voice even with an effort. “Victoria sent me to bring her papers, said you know which ones.” His mask of calm wavered when the Commando closed the door. At least there wouldn’t be any witnesses.

  “She sent you?” the man asked, shifting on his feet. Chad’s eyes were on his gun, slung casually across his shoulder. No vest—just a guard.

  “Yes. She couldn’t find any of you guys. It’s no big deal,” Chad waved his hand, putting on a friendly face again, as if it mattered under the mask. But even as he kept talking, the man’s hand reached for the radio on his belt.

  Distracted as he was, the poor bastard never saw that left hook coming.

  His teeth shattered from the impact, and his eyes rolled back even as Chad grabbed his jacket, keeping the man from crashing into a table behind him.

  I am so dead, the thought flashed in his head, while his fingers searched the man’s numerous pockets. What was he going to do now? Dead or alive, the man would alert the Commandos, and they’d be busted.

  Chad pushed the thought to the back of his head when, at last, he found something useful. Unlike the civilians, the guards were allowed to keep their smartphones. And it solved all of Chad’s problems, except the problem of being spotted and shot dead in about five minutes.

  He grabbed the phone, unlocked it with the man’s thumb, and tapped the camera. With the flash on, he quickly snapped a few pictures of the room and screens, before he turned to the table filled with papers. He spread them on the table and snapped more pictures. Let Rooney sort through them, even if there wasn’t anything useful at first glance.

  Chad ran his hand over the papers, returning them to their previous disorganized state, and slipped the phone into his inside pocket. He hoped they wouldn’t scan him again. There was only one minor question—the knocked-out Commando at his feet.

  Chad could feel the seconds tick away along with his racing heartbeat while he struggled to come up with a solution. He could try to hide the body behind a table, which would give them more time to escape. He could take the man’s radio with him, too.

  But they would still find out eventually, and he would be the one to blame when the Commandos changed their tactics and HQ was back to square one.

  There was only one other option—to take the man with him, but how was he going to get past the Commandos?

  Quiet footsteps sounded behind the door, and Chad’s head snapped up. He had an idea of how he could do that but wasn’t sure if he was actually able to do something like that.

  The door cracked open, and Patrick’s blue eyes stared at him. “Are you okay? I saw him come in.”

  “Come in and close the door,” Chad whispered, grabbing the unconscious Commando by the belt.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Patrick’s hand flew up to grab his hair, before he remembered about the mask. “We can’t leave a body behind!”

  Chad closed his eyes and tuned out the panic in Patrick’s voice.

  “We’re not leaving him behind.” Pain’s not gonna believe this. He opened his eyes and looked at Patrick. “He’s coming with us.”

  Chapter 16

  “Keep moving!” Chad muttered.

  Patrick hissed a response but slowed down even more as the crowd around them got jammed in the narrow corridor. Chad snapped his mouth shut, reminding himself to stay focused on the man that was sandwiched between him and Patrick. Chad held him in place, while their two shields kept him upright and off the ground. The moment they collapsed, people would notice and probably alert the Commandos.

  The crowd finally started moving again, and Chad gritted his teeth, feeding the shield more energy. Just a few more steps. He tightened his grip on the man’s belt. The gun was poorly covered by the man’s jacket and pants, but with Chad covering him from behind, no one would notice.

  Back in the control room, he had seen their bus move away from the exit, then stop to wait for them, while another one pulled up to the door and people started filing inside. With the darkness and the crowd, it was the opportunity they needed. All they had to do now was slip by the officers and get to the back of the bus without raising suspicion.

  “Turn right,” Patrick whispered, stepping through the door.

  Chad followed him, keeping his head low. Their driver and guard were nowhere to be seen. His heart racing, he followed Patrick to the bus, and the others slunk out of the shadows to cover them.

  Chad climbed one step, then another, and was swallowed up by the vehicle’s dark interior. Just as they got in, the two Commandos jumped into the bus behind them.

  “Finally! Come on, boys, we’ve wasted too much time already,” one of them grumbled.

  Chad tried not to think of all the eyes that peered at them through the dark as they made their way to the back of the bus. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the Commandos weren’t watching, then pushed the unconscious man into a seat next to Luke and squeezed in between him and Patrick.

  “What the fuck?” Luke whispered, staring at him.

  “Don’t ask.” Chad propped up the Commando inconspicuously. “If he moves, put him back to sleep.”

  Luke just kept staring at Chad, until Chad turned away.

  He let his mind wander, taking the most of every minute of the ride before he had to use his shield again. They’d have a better cover this time and would only have to make a few steps out of the bus and to the nearest corner.

  He patted the radio that he had turned off and hidden in his pocket. What else were they going to find in the man’s pockets, and more importantly, how much did he know? Chad jumped to his feet when the bus finally stopped, another door right next to them opening.

  His companions got up, crowding around him as he grabbed the man’s belt again and spread out his shield to lift him upright.

  “Stay close,” Luke whispered to the others. Before Chad knew it, they were out on the street, and the bus disappeared from sight as they rounded a corner.

  “Thank God.” Chad breathed out, lowering the man to the ground. He took a deep breath and rested his hands on his knees, not believing his luck. Too many things could’ve gone wrong.

  The Commando at his feet groaned. Before he could do anything about it, Luke struck the man, and he sprawled on the ground again.

  “Let’s go home before anyone sees us,” Luke grumbled, and led them into a dark alley, where they could take off into the air without being seen.

  * * *

  Peter signed the last paper and pushed it aside, huffing in annoyance. Never before had he felt so restless, stuck there with the paperwork. Then again, what else could he do while he waited for them to return?

  The phone rang, making him jump. “What?” he barked, pushing the button.

  “Team Alpha’s on the way.” Peter recognized Brad’s voice. He was on guard duty at Post Zero, the rooftop, and Peter had asked him to inform him personally about any updates tonight.

  “Good.”

  A minute later, the door swung open, and Luke strode inside. His troubled eyes settled on Peter as he stopped and dropped his mask onto the conference table. The others followed his example, and then there was Chad, carrying someone by the jacket, and Patrick with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder.

  Peter stood and stared as Chad dropped the man to the floor and raised his gaze. A minute passed, and still no one spoke up.

  Peter narrowed his eyes. “I did send five of you there, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Luke said, nodding. His lips formed a tight line as he glanced at Chad. “That poor bastard is a Commando that your protégé here has knocked out and kidnapped, because apparently, sticking to the plan is a concept foreign to him.” Luke glared at Chad, making him look down.

  “Kidnapped?” Peter raised an eyebrow.

  Chad looked up at him, his expression hardening in defense. He unzipped his jacket and took out a smartphone and a radio. They fell on the table, followed by the AK.

  Peter let another eyebrow climb up his forehead.

  “It’s a guard from the base,” Chad said. “There was nothing there, okay? It was all dark, we didn’t know where we were, we couldn’t see their faces, nothing. So when he walked in while I was searching the control room, it was actually good, because I got to use his phone and take pictures and everything…”

  “Stop, stop, stop!” Peter held up a hand. “Let’s start from the beginning and hear the whole story.” He looked at Luke, who opened his mouth again. “And then we will discuss the protocol and your mistakes.”

  Luke grunted. “I’ll let the hero here tell the story, since he knows best.”

  Chad shot an annoyed look at him and crossed his arms, some of the usual stubborn fire back in his eyes.

  He told Peter about the uneventful ride to the Commandos’ base and the meeting, and Peter didn’t want to interrupt, but couldn’t help himself once Chad got to the part about the control room.

  “So they just left it open?”

  “Well, this guy walked out of it when we arrived, and I guess he was going to get back to his post but got held up,” Chad said.

  No way are these people military, Peter thought. “And you got to see the whole place through the cameras? Was there a laboratory of any kind, anything similar to what Chris remembers?”

  Chad shook his head. He picked up the smartphone.

  “Look, there were three screens, split in four, that makes a dozen images. Half of them were from where we had been: the entrance, the corridor, two cameras in the big hall…” He crouched and used the Commando’s finger to unlock the phone, muttering, “This sucks, can I chop off his thumb or something?”

  Peter grimaced. “Rooney will take care of the phone.” He came closer to look at the pictures.

  Chad’s thumb kept flipping through the photos, until Peter grabbed his wrist. “Wait.” He flipped back and pointed at one of the monitors, with a frozen image of a corridor and two blurry figures. “Is that…?”

  “Yes,” Chad nodded. “Victoria.”

  “How do you know?” Peter looked up at him. “Did she introduce herself?”

  “No. But it sounded like she’s in charge, and you were right, she’s probably got military or police background. She was the only female there, and she said those guys with the guns were the officers.”

  Peter looked at Luke.

  “It’s her,” Luke said. “And we still got nothing on her. Not even a face.”

  “What happened next?”

  Chad shrugged, slipping his hands in his pockets. “The guard returned, and I had to knock him out before he could alert the others. I used his phone to take the pictures, and then Patrick came looking for me. We left, got on the bus, and back to where they had picked us up.”

  Peter glanced at Luke again, finding the most peculiar expression on his face. When no one said anything, Peter waved his hand. “Left how? No one noticed you’d kidnapped a man?”

  Chad’s eyes darted to Patrick for a second, before focusing on his feet. “Well, it was dark and crowded there.”

  “And?”

  “And Patrick covered me.”

  “And?” Peter pressed.

  Chad sighed. “And we pretended like he was walking between us, using a shield.”

  “What?” Peter turned to Luke, because clearly, neither Chad nor Patrick wanted to explain what they had done.

  “They sandwiched the man,” Luke said, folding his arms on his chest. “They propped him up with a shield, and the Commandos didn’t even notice the walking dead.”

  “Oh Lord…” Peter’s hand flew up to his chin. “And it worked? Why did I never think of this?”

  “Because we use more secure methods when we need to break someone out of somewhere?”

  Peter nodded. “True.” He heard Chad sigh again. “If it worked, it worked. At least now we have someone worth interrogating. Leave this stuff here and take him to the basement. Mark, you’re free to go.”

  The young man took off without another word, probably dying to show everything they had found to Rooney, so they could spend hours raking their brains and computers for ideas.

  Chad looked at him, but Peter waved him off, together with the other two men and the unconscious Commando. Luke didn’t need to be told to stay. The moment the door closed behind the others, he locked gazes with Peter.

  “They’re not military, and it’s not their real base,” Peter said.

  Luke nodded. “I think Mark’s the only one who’s figured it out. But at least Rob’s squad has managed to follow the bus. We know where the base is now.”

  Peter sat in his chair, and Luke took a seat at the table.

  “There’s probably nothing aside from what you guys have seen. Otherwise, it would’ve been stupid to take all those civilians there. And a control room, left open without a guard? Military or no, this Victoria is good at putting up a façade,” Peter said. “But that’s it.”

  “Oh, she’s military, all right. You should’ve heard her speak. And before you start defending him—it was exactly like I said. You don’t send untested rookies on high-risk operations.”

  Peter shook his head. “Don’t be too hard on him. We’ve tried playing it safe with the Commandos, and look where it got us. This base is the first real lead, aside from that jeep they found, which yielded zilch, by the way. No number plate, no prints, nada. And now we’ll at least know the base layout, thanks to Chad’s pictures. The mission wasn’t compromised, so just let it go.”

  “Screw the mission,” Luke hissed. “The boy doesn’t know when to stop, Peter. There are rules, and they’re made exactly for people like him, like Pain, and Marco! Because others don’t even need the rules to know that enough is enough. And Chad is reckless, so you have to keep him on a tight leash, or he will get killed.”

  “I tried keeping Pain on a tight leash.” Peter kept his voice down with an effort. “You were there, how did that work out? He’s just like her, Luke. They do what they want anyway, and always will. The only thing I can do is trust them, and earn their trust, so they at least don’t keep things from me. And Chad… He’s his father’s son.”

  “His father?” Luke laughed without a hint of humor. “His father, who erased his mark to make sure his boy would live, who gave up raising his only son to keep him safe from Eugene, from this? There was so much more to Michael than brains and courage, and Chad will need decades to grow into it, to gain the same perspective on things. But if you keep putting him in danger like this—”