A split second after Rafe’s words came online, they once again cut out. A blink later, the images on each monitor disappeared in a volcanic eruption of light and fire. That was it. One minute the entire team was there, and the next…nothing.
No sound. No visual. After the blinding flash dissipated, nothing but blackness filled the screens. Shock froze the breath in Penny’s lungs, and rainbow dots peppered her vision.
Rafe was gone. Trey was gone. All of them…gone.
“You fucking son of a bitch!” Logan shouted. “Penny! Run!”
The shout of her name and the coinciding crash were the only things that kept Penny from hitting the floor. She turned as Logan dropped, heavy and unconscious, to the ground.
Agent Collins redirected his attention—and his gun—to her. “Alone at last. I believe we have a mutual friend, Miss Kline…and he’s very anxious to lay eyes on you again.”
*
Burning pain made Rafe suck in a sharp breath. Fuck, that hurt. Everything hurt. He flipped on his back and cursed. “Mother-sucking son of a—”
“Rafe!” A hard nudge followed the shout of the voice. “Over here! I found him!” Another nudge. “Fuck, man. Are you dead?”
“Poke my ribs again, Hanson, and your new handle’s going to be fucking Stumpy.” Rafe coughed, then growled as a jab of lightning speared straight through his torso. He forced his eyes open and winced at the light Trey aimed into his face. “Turn that fucking thing off.”
“If you wanted to take a nap, you could’ve at least waited until the work was done,” Trey joked. He stepped back, offering an arm to help Rafe back to his feet.
Rafe took him up on the assist and ignored the sharp twinge in his back that came along with the abrupt move. “I think that blast could’ve been spotted from the fucking Hubble.”
“You’re not fucking lying,” Stone stated as he and Chase walked up with Vince and his crew in tow. All of them looked a bit singed around the edges, Franklin a little more literally. Half his fucking pants leg was missing. “Damn glad we didn’t opt for an all-in breach. Now the question is what set it off? Was it timing? Bad luck? Or someone off in the shadows with a remote detonator?”
“None of them,” Vince interjected. “That place was rigged to blow a few minutes after entry—at least the setup I saw in the east corner of the building.”
“It was the same with the west end,” Chase agreed.
“So it wouldn’t have mattered which entry point we chose,” Stone said, stating what they all were figuring out. “The place would’ve blown to high hell with any of them.”
Vince nodded in agreement. “Smart thing to do would be to rig every single entry point. With the amount of C-4 that was used, one trip would be all that was needed to set off a chain reaction of explosions until you have one big-ass hole in the ground.”
“You.” Chase crooked his finger at a baby-faced DEA agent. “This has been the compound you guys have been focusing on for the last few months?”
He nodded. “This entire region.”
“Why?”
The kid looked at him as if he had two heads. “Because according to our footage, this is where all the activity was happening. The drug runners couldn’t have advertised their presence more if they’d sent up smoke flares and wore reflective gear. There was no reason to look anyplace else.”
Rafe’s stomach dropped like a lead ball. He didn’t give a damn that it wasn’t professional or that his teammates shouted at him to calm the hell down. He fisted Doogie DEA’s shirt and brought the kid to his toes. He prayed that for once in his life, his gut was wrong. “Who’s the agent who stumbled on this intel?”
“A-Agent Collins,” the kid stuttered. “He’s the one who has to sign off on all missions—intel gathering, surveillance…raids.”
“And what’s been done with the east and northern quadrants?”
“Nothing. We’ve been throwing most of our focus out here.”
With a disgusted curse, Rafe dropped the kid to his feet. One look at his team indicated they were all on the same page. They’d found Fuentes’s inside man.
And he was back at HQ.
With Penny.
*
A steady thwump-thwump-thwump filled Penny’s ears, ricocheting pain from her hairline to all points north, south, east, and west. She blinked, winced, and blinked again. The sharp contrast of the dim interior and brightly colored control panel seared her retinas, but it was the explosion of memories that stole her ability to breathe.
The raid.
The explosion.
Rafe.
She’d witnessed the blast, seen the screen of white fuzz, and heard the aftermath of the chilling silence. But wouldn’t she have felt something if Rafe was gone? An ache? An all-knowing gut feeling? The irreparable shatter of her heart?
She’d always known there was a chance she’d have to let him go, but not like that. Not before she had a chance to tell him how she felt, and not because he was trying to bring back her family.