She looked up to watch Uri pace. He cracked his knuckles repeatedly. He hadn’t spoken much since Mariah had been taken, and Arden didn’t trust him to keep a level head.
Niall was worse. He was as high as a kite. His eyes were glassy, and he mumbled as if hearing voices in his head. When she’d tried to speak with him earlier, he’d stared through her. She couldn’t stop him from coming on this rescue mission, though. She didn’t have that pull. Not yet, at any rate. Though it was looking increasingly every day as if she’d have to take control, if only to save him.
That pissed her off even more. She wanted to save Mariah, but had hoped that she could do so with people she could trust.
Her boots were laced now, so she sat up and turned to Colin. “This gang is imploding.”
He threw out his hands and exhaled in exasperation. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“Treason,” she muttered under her breath. They’d been dipping their toes in the treason pool a lot lately.
Kimber sailed into the room, cutting off their conversation. She’d be on comms for this operation because they needed Colin on the run. They were going in small: just her, Colin, Niall, and Uri. Kimber walked to the vid-projector and inserted her data drive. A large map opened on the screen, showing the inside of the South Grid Lockup. “Huddle up.”
Arden and Colin ignored her. They both chose to keep their butts on the bench, leaning back like they were too lazy to get up.
Uri walked over to stand beside Kimber. His face rock hard and mean. The running suit he wore emphasized his muscles as he crossed his arms and glared at the projection. “What’s the plan?”
“I’ve gone over the schematics a dozen times. When they say that the Lockup is impenetrable, it is,” Kimber said. “I can’t find a single way to get inside without setting off a dozen sensors and starting a full-scale war.”
“Which means we’ll have to take her when they move her to the transport, like I told you,” Arden said.
Kimber shot her a glare and then changed the projection from inside the facility to the port deck and the surrounding area of the Lockup. All the possible avenues for escape were labeled. Then she said, as if Arden hadn’t spoken or come up with the plan in the first place, “Arden’s intel was that Mariah will be relocated to CRC sometime today. We’ll have to stake out the docking pad to be ready for when that happens.”
Arden didn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes.
Colin stood up and walked closer to study the map. “We’re grabbing her and splitting up without cover?”
“We didn’t have enough warning to set anything more elaborate in place. Nor do we have clear intel. That’s not on me.” Kimber threw another look over her shoulder at Arden.
Two moons, Kimber stole her plan and then stabbed her in the back at the same time.
“It also means anything can go wrong,” Uri said. “Snatching her only gives us a minute to a minute and a half at most to make our escape.”
Kimber gave Uri a hard look. “Do you want to get her or not?”
“You think you can shut off the cameras?” he countered.
Obviously Uri had as much faith in Kimber’s skill set as Arden did. Though in this case, it didn’t matter. Their time frame for the job was too small. If they were seen, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
Niall studied the projection with a frown. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s our only choice,” Arden said.
Kimber slid her gaze to Arden once more. “Why doesn’t Arden tell us where she got her intel? I’m sure that if we knew we could trust it, we’d feel a lot better about it than we do now.”
Not being able to be honest about it had turned into a huge pain. Arden understood how they felt. She would hate to go into a dangerous situation without knowing all the details. Especially since she’d voiced the same doubts herself. “She’ll be there.”
Colin sent her an amused look.
“You had to get the intel from somewhere. Who did you use? How did you pay them?” Niall pressed.
Arden sealed her lips tightly together and glared at him. She raised a single eyebrow.
“We’ll be sitting there with our asses hanging out,” Niall said. “All because we should trust you without any proof? Have any of us ever asked you to do the same?”
Wasn’t he sort of doing that now? He was high and unsteady. How dare he accuse her of being the one who put them in jeopardy.
Arden swallowed back her frustration. She wasn’t all that successful. “Let’s focus on the plan, okay? They won’t be expecting us. We’ve never done this sort of thing before. It should be easy enough to take out the cams, take out the guards, and jet out of there.”
“Oh yeah, easy,” Niall agreed sarcastically.
“Mariah shouldn’t put the rest of us in danger,” Kimber said. “We’re going to get ourselves killed trying to save her.”
“Screw you,” Uri shot back at her. “Nothing is as important as saving Mariah.”
Niall shook his head and walked away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dade could see just fine from beneath the synth-mask and hood. He’d not gone out as the Ghost in days. Even though he was privy to the knowledge of his father’s increased security measures and managed to avoid the worst of them, it had grown too risky. His father’s determination to catch the Ghost had become an obsession.
Dade had tried to let things cool off and get back to normal before he committed another theft. Yet here he was, sneaking into the joint refinery owned by all the Solizen families. It was a factory he was unfamiliar with, and he was here against his better judgment and Saben’s vocal protestations. Dade knew this was taking a chance, but he didn’t have another choice. The dispensaries he usually gave VitD to were running dangerously low on their supplies.
If he could score a larger haul than normal, it would buy him enough time to figure out how to bypass the new security and get back on an easier theft cycle. He’d hoped changing to a new location would work to his advantage and that he’d find some easier ways to steal VitD. So far that plan hadn’t worked. Security was tighter here than at any facility he’d ever hit. Every floor was worse than the last.
He crept along the yellow-lit halls on the floor where he believed the latter stages of the drugs were processed before they’d go into packaging. It was a calculated guess since he couldn’t locate the schematics in any of his family’s cloud systems.
Dade turned a corner, sticking to the sides of the hall and moving as quickly as he could without drawing attention. This hallway was empty, another in a long line of nondescript hallways within the mazelike facility. The plain walls were broken up by metal doors with small round windows on both sides. He glanced in as he passed to see if anything inside the rooms looked like what he wanted.