If the CI was to be believed, it would drop enough ice into SF’s streets to kill off a brontosaurus, and they had to move fast.
Leonard opted for a launch raid, hoping to catch the RV’s owner, Franklin Marshall, unaware. Based on the lack of lights coming from the RV’s dirt-clouded windows, either Marshall was asleep at three in the morning, or he’d covered the windows with tinfoil to block anyone from looking in.
Either was a possibility, as was the man having an arsenal inside despite his lean arrest record. Con’s team planned for the worst-case scenario and hoped for the best. It was far better than trusting humanity’s kindness and burying one of their own.
They worked silently—a small team of six black-clad officers stealing through a dimly lit parking lot. Hours of training and practice helped with their synchronicity, but nothing beat working a raid. Connor stepped in time with Roberts, keeping his weapon aimed up over the man’s head as the smaller man swung a black battering ram into the RV’s door.
It burst in, a scatter of old plastic, wood chips, and metal. The team poured in, and Con’s heart began to skip its curious, familiar beat, a pounding of excitement in his chest. There was nothing to compare to the feeling of that first whiff of danger or the sound of boots on the floor when they came in. The press of his team around him, then the explosion of their bodies separating to break down a house’s interior, working back to back to secure the area.
The motor home was no different. The shatter hit, and they were through, deep murmurs of voices and then the hush of their breathing amid the periodic orders Con barked out to his team. He’d handpicked each one, culling through the applicants until he was satisfied he’d go into a dangerous situation with his ass and back covered.
Adrenaline hit his bloodstream hard and fast, amping up his senses as he ducked away from the splinters coming at him from the remains of the door. While the RV was a long straight space, there were nooks and crannies within its enormous rectangular shape. A bathroom took up a bit of the side, and a quick glance at the back showed a thick curtain of beads—both areas potentially dangerous for their raid, especially since the space was tight, and there wouldn’t be a lot of room to maneuver.
Con broke off Evers and Moffatt to the back, keeping Roberts with him for the front. At some point in the RV’s lifetime, probably soon after its weary carcass was dumped in the parking lot, someone’d converted the driving cab to another lounging or sleeping place, but a partially drawn tie-dyed curtain blocked off a clear view of the area.
The rest of the RV was empty, and if there was a shit ton of meth in the vehicle, they’d probably find it hidden under platforms or in walls. It was going to be a long and tedious hunt, and Con wanted to secure the RV before they dragged it off to the yard to be broken down—because nothing said surprise like finding a drug dealer hiding in the bathroom of an impounded motor home.
“Clark, Davis—bathroom’s yours.” Connor waved them off. “Mind your Qs.”
He kept his own quadrant clear, pressing back to back with Roberts as they moved to the front of the RV. Their boots clunked on the faux-wood floor. It was strangely spongy beneath Con’s feet, and he pondered if the drugs were in caches beneath the floor, because as they inched forward, the RV rocked and swayed under them.
That supposition would have to wait until they got the RV dragged away. For right now, his sole focus was on finding the man who’d parked the RV so many years ago, then decided it would be a good place to stash poison—a poison Connor Morgan had no intention of ever letting onto his city’s streets. They’d hit the building next. The RV was too small to cook meth in, but Marshall owned the brick building beyond the parking lot.
Lots of space there to cook up a chemical stew strong enough to rip a man’s brain apart.
Something was off about the raid. The niggle of off nipped at Connor’s mind, and he scanned the interior, looking for something—anything—to tell him what he was bothered by. The RV wasn’t clean by any stretch, not a sparkling eat-off-the-floor kind of environment, but neither was it packed to the gills with papers or rotting garbage. If anything, it looked like an aging hippie’s sanctuary, complete with a cardboard poster of a topless Janis Joplin at an old Haight-Ashbury event. Several lit candles lined the kitchenette’s counters, flickered erratically from the wind coming through the now extinct front door.