Page 75 of Guarding Truth
“Sorry for the bad timing.” Alana racked her nine-millimeter Ruger. “But we’ve got some bad guys to take down.”
“Caleb and I were just talking about how we don’t have time to wait for backup.”
“Yes, we could see you were talking,” Noelle chimed in while Alana racked a second gun.
Time to get her head out of the clouds and focus on the mission ahead of them.
“We know they will kill Ivy now that they have what they want.” Juliette glanced in the back seat, glad to have friends and coworkers like these two. Always ready to cover her no matter what.
Caleb scrolled on his phone. “I have a map of the interior of the warehouse. This place is a massive online store. Almost seven hundred thousand square feet of space. It’ll take us forever to search.”
“What if two of us take the front and two of us take the back and start searching?” Juliette eyed her crew. “That way when the police come, we can hopefully have a place to send them. Then we’re not sitting around waiting.”
They all agreed. Caleb and Alana would search the back, and Juliette and Noelle would head to the front.
Juliette and Noelle crept toward the loading docks. Some of the two-story garage doors had trucks sticking out of them, and others were closed tight. She counted thirty trucks before darkness obstructed her vision, despite the blinding white security lights strategically placed every fifty feet.
Every fifth or sixth loading bay, they’d spot a solid door granting access to the warehouse. Of course, each door had a keypad with a glowing red light.
Noelle nodded at one of the doors—it had a window at the top. She cupped her hands together to boost Juliette up. Too bad Juliette hadn’t been a cheerleader in high school, because she wobbled a bit and clutched the minuscule ledge of the window for stability.
She wanted to scream at her disappointment. All she saw were boxes and crates ready to ship. Nothing they could use. Just as she was about to hop down, a light flickered inside.
Juliette watched. Another flicker, but this time someone walked by a door, dead-center inside the warehouse.
Noelle’s arms started to shake, so Juliette jumped down. “I see movement inside.”
Click.“Should have spotted the movement outside.” A man emerged from the shadow of the building with a gun pointed at Noelle’s head.
Juliette couldn’t make out the man’s face in the darkness, but the voice sounded familiar.
The man kept to the shadows, but the gun never wavered. “Well, it’s your lucky day. The General thinks you might be useful to us alive. Hostages might make good bargaining chips for our final escape.”
The General? Who was this guy taking orders from? Juliette heard footsteps approaching from behind her, but by the time she could turn around, someone had jabbed a needle in her neck. Ten seconds later, her legs gave out and she crumpled to the ground.
* * *
SATURDAY, 2:30 A.M.
This hadbad ideawritten all over it.
Caleb and Alana crept around the back of the property. The giant warehouse complex stretched out as far as they could see. Rows of garages lined the back wall of the building where trucks pulled in to load or unload.
“The police will be here soon,” Caleb whispered to Alana. “Maybe we split up to cover more ground.”
Alana nodded her consent and rattled off her phone number. Caleb quickly added her to his contacts. “Text me if you find anything,” she said. “Don’t go in alone. I know you’re an Army man, but you wait for me.” She stared him down until he nodded.
“I agree we wait for the police before going in.” He wanted to be able to give the policesomethinguseful to get to these hackers before they killed Ivy.
He pushed out all the worst-case scenarios from his head. Ivy was alive. Every fiber in his body believed this.
After a minute, he lost sight of Alana, who had sprinted to the opposite side of the complex. He checked doors and windows and found nothing. But as he headed up the ramp to one of the closed garage doors, he heard something.
Voices.
Caleb froze. Where were the police? Why was it taking them so long to get the SWAT team in place? He scanned the area. A field with a retention pond lay at the back of the warehouses. Could the police be lining up behind the fence on the other side of the pond?
There were no windows on this side of the warehouse except for at the top of the building. He spotted some small rectangular windows overlooking the interior. If he climbed onto the roof of the parked eighteen-wheeler, he could pull himself up to the window ledge.