They had to go around the feds because he couldn’t trust that Petty would have friends who could take out Evans before he could talk. Ian was trying to talk to some of his contacts at Homeland Security for backup, but for now they were on their own.
In the distance, he watched Jake and Murdoch approach the hangar. Jake turned around and held up two fingers. Two cameras. He clenched his fist. Stationary. The cameras only watched the doors, didn’t swing or move to catch what was happening in the parking lot.
“I’m going in. Take a position.” He gripped his SIG, checking the clip.
Sean stepped up beside him. “Uh, I think I should follow you. I’m not sending you in there alone.”
He needed to make some things clear to his friend. “You’re not sending me in there at all. This is my operation and I need you in a sniper position.”
Sean’s jaw firmed stubbornly. “I’ll text Jake and get his ass back here.”
Alex shook his head. There was no time. He needed them both to do the jobs he’d assigned them. “I can’t trust Murdoch. Jake is the last line. I won’t let that fucker leave with Eve. I’m going to try to sneak in and get Eve out. Then the rest of you can do what you need to do. I’ll be taking care of my wife.”
He had no idea what had already been done to her. Had Evans gotten his hands on her again? Had he beaten her? Raped her? His heart ached at the thought of his precious wife brutalized again, but he knew one thing would change this time. This time she would be in his arms and he would do whatever it took to bring her back to life. He would give up anything to hold her and love her again.
“Alex, you don’t want to take down Evans yourself?”
He wanted to eviscerate the fucker. “Eve is the only important thing here.”
Sean put a hand on his arm. “Get your wife. I’ll take care of bringing in Evans and Petty. Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“When everything is out in the open, we can handle them both together.”
A nice, quiet assassination. A little weekend project to share with his brothers. “Yeah.”
He turned to the hangar. There looked to only be the one door on this side and no windows. It was very likely still open on the garage side. He would have to sneak in that way.
“Alex, uhm, I think Eve’s already gotten away herself.” Sean pointed to the northern side of the hanger where the field led down to the alligator farm.
Eve was sprinting across the grass still dressed in her pajamas, but her shoes were gone. He looked through the binoculars. She was bleeding, but she was alive.
He had to get to her. Where was she going?
He heard a loud yell and then four men ran out of the hangar, pursuing his wife.
“Take them out, Sean.”
Sean gave him a predatory grin and then hoisted the scoped rifle up. “With pleasure. What the fuck is she doing? Does she know what that is?”
Alex’s heart nearly stopped because his wife ran into the enclosure. She would be surrounded by vicious predators.
Without another thought in his head, Alex took off running.
Eve’s hands started to shake as she looked around. Nausea rolled. She really didn’t like reptiles. Why the hell had someone willingly put a freaking pit of goddamn alligators right in the middle of a very nice field? Whoever did it, they were stupid, out-of-their-mind assholes who deserved to die and very slowly.
She held as still as possible as a gargantuan gator moved past her, his wicked looking claws sinking into the mud as it crawled to the pool portion of her own private hell. The late-afternoon sunlight shone on the creature and its pitch-black eyes. Those eyes were dead, nothing like life in them. It was an eating machine that had climbed right out of the dinosaur age.
She’d seen eyes like that before. Michael Evans had dead eyes, too.
“Hey, princess, do you like our little friends?”
Her pursuers stood just outside the enclosure. There were four of them, and now they appeared to be in no hurry to drag her back. These men were obviously Evans’s thugs. They were dressed for work in jeans and T-shirts, one of which had an oil stain on the front. They had likely been pulled away from their mechanical duties to run down the prisoner.
“You know, I heard those gators like to feed at twilight,” one said. He’d holstered his weapon, his hands on his hips as though just waiting for a show. “They get a little aggressive when they scent blood, too.”
She had no idea what alligators would and wouldn’t do. She’d never expected to be close to one.
A scream leapt from her throat as she felt something scaly scratch across the back of her leg. A gator’s tail swished behind her as though she was a fly it was trying to warn away. She jumped, but came down hard on her ankle and fell in the mud, landing right in front of another monster.
A horrible hissing sound filled the air as the gator’s jaws opened, and she could smell fetid, rotten air.
The men outside the enclosure laughed as she scrambled away.