Page 14 of Devil's Retribution

I stared over the back fence at her small, cozy house, with a single bathroom light burning and everything else dark and quiet inside. Graves’s team would be watching her too. I quickly texted Alexei.

Is there any remote monitoring of her security cameras?

He responded after a moment.

Yes. We’re running a trace. Once that’s done, we’ll start the local blackout.

Good. Let me know when it’s done.

Once it was, it would stir up Graves’s men, and anyone physically present would come out of hiding to check the house directly. Once they emerged, we could take them down.

Minutes ticked past while we watched and waited. Finally, Alexei got back to me.

We have their location. I’ll send you the address and all the details we can dig up.

Good, we were ready to go. I texted back.

Fine. Go forward with jamming the signals. We’ll deal with whoever pops up.

“Blackout is happening now,” I told the others, pulling my balaclava on in the depths of the van and checking my guns. The others started doing the same. I went back to watching the house through the van window.

About a minute later, I saw movement in the side yard. A tall, lean figure in dark clothes and hoodie slipped out of the shadows and moved toward the house. He took up a position there, watching and waiting for any trouble. “There’s one,” I muttered.

I counted three more moving in, one to each side of the property. I suspected another was still in the trees on the south end of the house, but I couldn’t be sure. If he had watched her this closely for years, no wonder she’s gotten paranoid.

Why so many? Why monitor her so closely as an adult, instead of leaving her to deal with her own life and safety? Was it all about protecting her, or was there something else going on? Was this normal, or had my visit to her practice earlier rattled the old man? Even if he hadn’t taken my brother from me, I’d hate this guy just for pulling this shit. I wondered if he tried to have her chipped like a goddamn dog too.

Emma Martinez and her boy were easy to sympathize with. Their uncle was easy to hate. I wondered what it was like for a sweet kid like her to grow up around someone like her uncle. This surveillance… is it protection or control?

I shook off the idle thought. There was time to speculate later. Right now, I needed to get us inside without alerting Graves’s team.

“I’ll go ahead and carve us a way in,” I told the others. “Bring the stretchers and the fog machine.” I looked around at them. “Do you have your gas masks?” Nods all around. “Throat mics working?” I heard the clicks and little static bursts of them testing—then more nodding.

I would definitely have to kill two of the men and get us in and out before lack of check-ins alerted the other guards. Regrettable, but they had sealed their fates by working for my enemy.

“Let’s get started. I’ll let you know when I’m in position.” I jumped out and the van door slid closed behind me. Seconds later, I had melted into the shadows beneath the trees.

The dash across the street was my one bit of exposure, I had trained long and hard to stalk the shadows, well before I’d become Pakhan. Back then, I had been an enforcer, later, a lieutenant, and then my uncle’s strong right hand. Finally, his replacement. Now, though, it was time to go back to basics.

The pistols under my open leather jacket were matte black-finished nine-millimeter Berettas custom-throated for the small, chunky silencers screwed onto them. As soon as I reached the shadows at the far side of the road, I slid the left one out of its holster and thumbed the safety off.

I slipped into the side yard, where I could see one of the unwitting doctor’s babysitters standing in the shadows. With less experience I might not have seen him, but whoever had ordered them to encircle the house had done so in a hurry. No time to carefully select a hiding spot—and I was better at seeking, than this guy was at hiding.

I heard him muttering into his radio as I drew closer. I let him finish, knowing that cutting him off during a check-in would bring the whole team running this way at once. I had to keep gunfire to a minimum. It was too easy for stray bullets to go through one of these windows and endanger the doctor or her boy.

Patient and still, I waited. Finally, he clicked off and started turning back to his patrol.

I shot him in the back of his head, rolled the body under some bushes, and moved on toward the front of the house.

This guard had a perch on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and looking around warily. He had unscrewed the porch light bulb, but I could see the flash of his pale, uncovered cheekbone and the glimmer of blond hair. He had a rifle across his thighs. All right.

I slipped as close as I dared around the big planter in front of the living-room window, mostly using the house’s own shadow now. Thank God the moon wasn’t higher.

I almost put my foot on a small inflatable ball that was lost in the front lawn. Probably one of those squeaky ones, with my luck—but I caught myself before I put real weight on it. Sloppy of me to forget that a lawn where a five-year-old lived, would have stray toys scattered across it.

The cherry on the guard’s smoke glowed as he took another long draw. I shot him while he was wrapped up in it. The cigarette fell from his lips, and then he followed it over the railing. I hid the body near the other and then spoke into my mic. “It’s time. Get the hoses in and the machine working and watch out for the backyard guy. I’ll take the other two out and go looking for their boss.”

I thought of Emma—Dr. Martinez—waking up in the middle of this and hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She was supposed to sleep through it all. But her uncle’s security men were complicating everything.