“Okay,” he said slowly, resigning himself to a nod. While hedging their bets on a probability gave him the fucking shakes, Kellan had to admit Isabella was no slouch in the strategy department. The plan might hinge on one “maybe”, but it was otherwise solid. Plus, she’d already made it clear in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t like the way she wanted to handle the situation, he was welcome to warm the Mustang’s seats while she did it without him.
File that under not goddamn happening. This neighborhood was a crime scene just waiting to go down, and despite Isabella’s gut feeling that Marcus would be a runner, Kellan had seen enough scrapes to know that once they got the guy backed into a corner, his fight or flight instincts just might err on the side of getting chippy.
Christ, they really did need the plan to work.
Doing one last check of their surroundings, Kellan took a mental snapshot of their exit paths and any potential obstacles that might cause snags. The entrance to the park sat in the center of the block, marked by a six-foot opening in the wrought iron fence surrounding the heavily shadowed space. A dense network of tree branches arched overhead, still thick with leaves that provided ample cover for the handful of acres that made up the park. What served as winding jogging paths during the day made for all sorts of hidden places for illicit acts at night, and he and Moreno were going to have to be at the very top of their game in order to pin Marcus down and get what they needed out of him.
The shadows around him slipped, pulling at his senses. The night air sent a chill down Kellan’s spine despite the cover of his black canvas jacket, and the sensation kicked him in the gut before kicking him back in time. God there was so much irony in how cold the desert got after the sun went down. That first night patrol had damn near ended him, and not from any danger the enemy had posed.
That had come later. Roadside bombs. Ambushes at checkpoints. So many things that could happen in less than a blink.
His heart worked faster against his rib cage, the frenzied rhythm becoming a white-noise whoosh that pressed against his eardrums with every step. Adrenaline threatened to picklock all the boxes in his brain, to make his breath stick and his hands shake, but he reached for an inhale, forcing his brain out of the desert and back into the here and now.
Focus. Nine paces from the car to the other side of the street. Six run-down row homes with mostly darkened windows facing the even darker park. No emotions. Facts only. Breathe.
“You ready?” came Moreno’s murmur, soft and sure enough to smooth out the jagged edges of his nerves. She inclined her head at the shadow-lined footpath leading away from the crumbling sidewalk, and Kellan anchored himself the rest of the way into the moment before nodding.
“Absolutely. Let’s go make the plan work.”
For the first few paces, he moved slowly, staying a half-step behind Isabella as she walked over the dimly lit trail. His eyes adjusted fast enough—shit, learning how to rely on senses other than sight was pretty much Ranger 101, not to mention the first damn thing they taught at the fire academy. Moreno seemed to adapt just as quickly, leading the way down the path on barely-there footsteps. They walked in tandem, her on the trail and him on her hip, passing couples knotted together and small groups of people smoking and drinking from shared bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. Most of them were far enough off the path not to even notice Kellan and Isabella moving past, but the few that did bother noticing them didn’t spare more than a brief glance, seemingly too wrapped up in their activities to care.
Of course, he noticed all of them, cataloguing hair color and build and about a dozen other things with each turn on the winding trail. But no one they passed came close to fitting Carmen’s description of Danny Marcus, and the path was becoming less and less populated the farther they went.
Kellan sent yet another furtive three-sixty through the shadows. “You think we’re going to find what we’re looking for?” he asked quietly, leaning in over Moreno’s shoulder. “We haven’t even seen anyone for about fifty paces.”
Her expression was a tough gauge in the low light filtering down from the street lamp ahead of them in the distance, but her body was strung with enough tight determination to broadcast her answer before she even murmured, “Patience is a virtue, Walker.”
“Do I strike you as the virtuous type?” There was no helping the implication laced all over the question, but as soon as Kellan caught the smile hooking at the corners of Moreno’s mouth, his boldness became worth it.