Page 159 of Caution to the Wind

“He was my best friend once,” I said slowly, tryin’ to work it out. “It’s possible he’d protect Mei like he did even after he betrayed me back in Calgary.”

“You still wanna go through with this, now?” Z asked, givin’ me lead to make the decision ’cause it was my girl on the line.

I swallowed thickly. “Let’s give her ten minutes. If she can get people outta the building, we head in as planned.”

Curtains had pulled up the plans for the building on his tablet so we’d have an overview of what we were walkin’ into even though we knew they would’ve made extensive changes. This was, after all, one of the biggest criminal banks in the province and not the quaint, run-down Chinatown inn it appeared to be on the outside.

We waited for what felt like hours after Mei and Cedar entered the building. My pulse was poundin’ so hard, it was like a percussion played against my skull. I had faith in my Rocky to handle herself, but sendin’ her into enemy territory with a fuckin’ turncoat was more than my blood pressure could stand.

Finally, the distant sound of a fire alarm started to blare.

Zeus and I shared a wolfish grin.

The doors burst open, and the business-attired lobby personnel flooded out into the street with smoke curlin’ around their bodies, dissipatin’ in the fierce spring wind. We waited a minute more, and the bees from deeper in the hive emerged, men in dark suits with guns and swords on their hips.

“Ready, brothers?” Zeus asked, vicious excitement in his tone.

A chorus of grunts in agreement and we opened the slidin’ door of the van to pour out into the brick alleyway across the street. Behind the Inn, another group of brothers were gettin’ off their bikes and headin’ in around the back.

We weren’t wearin’ our cuts, clad in generic black clothes so we fit in well with the crowd of panicked employees. It was easy to slip inside against the tide of people fleein’.

Mei’d managed to set a real blaze inside, usin’ a match to set fire to the curtains along the side wall of the lobby. The air was already dark and acrid with smoke, so I pulled my black bandana over my mouth and nose and lowered the rim of my toque farther over my eyes. Bat, Dane, Zeus, and I were the tip of the spear, headin’ toward the back of the lobby without falterin’ while King, Wrath, and Priest secured the lobby.

We found the staircase beside the elevator and hustled down the stairs. The smoke hadn’t made it through the fire door, which meant the level below us would probably be unaware of the panic above them.

Especially because the stairwell was soundproof with only thethwackof our motorcycle boots echoin’ off the white walls.

When we reached the bottom, two flights down, a keypad was beside the door.

We’d figured as much, so we weren’t deterred.

I covered my ears as Zeus shot a round of bullets into the wall beside the door.

Seconds later, it swung open with a mechanical whir, and two men stepped swiftly into the stairwell.

Bat shot one of them in the head, and the man collapsed soundless to the ground.

I kicked the other in the side of the knee. The crack of bone was loud in the muffled silence as was his ensuin’ scream. I used the butt of my axe handle to hit him in the temple.

He fell with asplatto the ground beside his buddy.

Zeus waited for us with his fingers just wedged inside the open door and then grinned as he shoved it open. Bat held it from between the wall and the door while Zeus pressed himself to the wall on the opposite side of the door.

I slid to the ground with my gun raised, ready to fire inside.

Only no one was there to greet us.

Instead, the vast underground warehouse was filled with men and women in their underclothes sittin’ at rows of plastic tables countin’ money in electronic counters and dividin’ it into laundry bags placed in huge rollin’ baskets bein’ shuttled to the back of the room where an enormous door to a safe was closed, but ready to receive the illicit money bein’ handled by, most likely, illegal immigrants smuggled into the country and indebted to the triad.

No one seemed to realize they’d been breached.

A few 49ers patrolled the outside of the room on the right and left, and the entrances at those walls, but other than the two soliders we’d taken out, we had free entry to the inner workings of the bank.

Z, Bat, and I shared an incredulous look and moved slowly into the room, guns at the ready. Bat stayed near the door, holdin’ it for the brothers I could just hear thuddin’ down the stairs after us.

Across the room, I spotted Nova’s dark head appear at the mouth of another entrance.

Above the vault in a glass room that overlooked the workers, I recognized the face of Ashes Li, Kang Li’s little brother, and the Red Pole of the triad. The same man who’d taken his fists to Mei in her room at Purgatory Motel. Even from a distance, I could see the healing scratch marks left over from Mei’s struggle.