“Thinking isn’t good enough—” I start but Sam cuts me off.
“We don’t have a choice.” Sam whips her head around, her long blond ponytail smacking her in the face. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but this is our best shot at getting them back. We don’t want Torres to have even the slightest idea that we know where they’re taking them. Who the hell knows if we’ll get another chance?”
As Sam turns back to the monitors, fear tangles through my body, its long, dark fingers gripping my lungs and forcing out an anxious breath.
“Reagan, maybe it’s best you don’t watch the take-down,” Sam says, her eyes jumping from monitor to monitor.
“Yeah, why don’t we go in the other room?” Luke adds, warily placing his hand on my shoulder.
“No. I’m fine,” I answer and cross my arms, forcing Luke’s hand to slide down my back.
“Look, I appreciate your help,” Sam replies, typing another message to the analysts at CORE. “We all know you have a gifted mind when it comes to strategy. This is just too much to take in.”
“Come on, Reagan,” Luke says, pulling again slightly on my shoulder.
“No! I’m staying,” I answer, my voice defiant. “I’ve trained for this stuff all over the world, haven’t I? Don’t freaking ask me to leave again.”
For a moment, there is no sound in the room. Sam stops typing at her computer. Cooper stops rocking back and forth on his toes. Even though no one can hear us on the other side of the microphone, the radios are momentarily silent. It’s so quiet, you can hear us not breathing, the emptiness created by shocked, breath-held lungs.
“The target’s SUV is one mile out, copy, one mile out to the airport,” a voice crackles, forcing our bodies out of their motionless state. Luke gently peels his fingers off my shoulder and sidesteps away.
Sam clears her throat before pressing down on the microphone and says, “Copy.”
The lower-right monitor with our view from the air cuts out again, black-and-white confetti taking over the screen and distorting our clear picture of the kidnappers’ SUV. Sam hits the monitor in frustration. “Dammit,” she hisses under her breath then pushes down on her microphone. “Todd, I keep losing your visual.”
“We’ve got ’em here at headquarters, Sam,” another male voice answers.
“Thanks, Thomas,” Sam replies, her voice calming down. My eyes widen. I’ve never met Thomas, never even talked to him. But I’ve heard my parents mention his name at least a thousand times. He’s their main contact at CORE, the one who gives them directions on where to go, who to rescue. He’s their eyes and ears as they head into a danger zone. Thomas does his best to keep them alive. “I just don’t like doing this blind,” Sam adds.
“Me either. But we don’t have much choice,” Thomas answers back. “All right, units on the ground, stand by. The target’s SUV is pulling up to the gate at the airport right now. They’ll be to you in sixty seconds. But stay out of sight. We need you to wait for the second Black Angel team. Stand down until backup reaches you.”
“We’ve got two guys on the ground,” I say and point to the monitors. “They need to go as soon as Torres’s guys get out of the car.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Sam replies, keeping her eyes glued to the monitors. “We need to wait for backup.”
“But if they see the SUV, they’re going to know we’re coming for them and they’ll open fire,” I protest. “They’re already on edge. They’re waiting for us. The only chance we have is to ambush them about five seconds after the kidnappers get out of the car. They’ll be momentarily preoccupied with getting my parents out. That’s the moment we have to go. Not a second before. Not a second after.”
“This is the plan, okay?” Sam replies, raising her voice. “This isn’t our first rodeo, Reagan. We need more manpower or we’re going to lose your parents. We have to keep them in the country.”
The nerves in my brain fire a dozen embattled emotions: terror and strength, agony and hope. My lungs swell with voluptuous panic and I swear I can actually feel my adrenal glands pumping adrenaline and cortisol into my body.
“We’ve got a visual,” a Black Angel on the ground speaks into his radio as the SUV comes into view on one of our many monitors. My hot fingers grip the sides of the metal chair and I have to tell myself to breathe.
“All right, guys, this is it,” Thomas’s voice comes through the monitor. I bite down on my lip as I watch the SUV come to a stop next to the jet. The back doors fly open and there they are, the thermal cameras giving away details I don’t want to see. My parents’ mouths are gagged, their wrists tied tightly behind their backs. Guards armed with semiautomatics grab them roughly at their biceps and push them toward the plane, guns pointed at their backs, one pull of the trigger away from death.