Page 144 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Stepping on his arm, just to hear thatcrunchagain, I scanned the space. Our teams had dealt with the auction staff mercilessly. The city’s guards and soldiers lay in crimsonpuddles on the glinting glass floor, now soiled in footprints as red as the streaks marring the white walls. Surely, Zion had to love the contrast.

I strode to him as he directed his catch-and-play team to handle the twelve shaking women huddled together in the corner, apprehensive of anyone approaching. Three of them stood aside, their gazes cold and hard, measuring and challenging.

“I’m going after Ryder,” I told Zion. “Have you heard anything from Eli or Ava?”

“Not yet. I’ll come with you.” He wiped the blood specks from his chin and turned to his group. “Do the sweep of the entire building. No survivors.”

Together, we fruitlessly combed the first floor, the trio we sought nowhere to be found, and moved on to the first, the second, and then the third floor, our search as futile as the useless lives of the guards we encountered on our way.

We exited the stairwell into the fourth floor, and a commotion pierced the sound of our footfalls.

“Down!” Eli shouted.

We dashed down the bright and immaculate hallway. Zion peeked around the corner right as a loud rattle of an automatic rifle reverberated powerfully enough to seep into your bones.

I hauled him back by his collar. Concrete crumbs covered us in dust as a string of bullets wrecked the edge of the wall, precisely where his head had been half a second ago.

Slamming him into the wall, I snarled into his face. “What do you think you are doing? Stay the fuck alive. I’m not going back without you.” My chest heaved as my mind spiraled out of control. One blink of an eye later, and I would have held his corpse.

His pulse beat faster, his breathing quickening, yet not a word left his mouth. He relaxed into my hold low on his throat,presenting me with total control of his airflow, and my mouth dried out. I licked my lips, and his blue eyes flicked to them.

Tension slithered up my thighs and pricked my abdomen, like a snake springing to strike, its venom tightening my core.

I roughly let Zion go, instantly missing his warmth, yet I pushed it all down, down and down, and carefully glimpsed around the corner.

Ava crouched beside the slumped soldier to check their pulse. “Dead,” she confirmed, and stood back up, grimacing at the scarlet liquid seeping into the floor tile’s crevices under her boots. “Ugh, now I’ll leave footprints everywhere. But you can bring Ryder out.”

“She was alone?” Eli’s head popped out of the open room, and he peered to both sides. Noticing me, he jerked his chin in acknowledgment and strode out of the room with Ryder in tow.

“Yeah.” Ava cleaned the soles of her boots on the dead guard’s uniform. “No others.”

Zion’s footsteps echoed behind me as we approached our friends. “What happened?” I asked.

“Don’t know.” Eli emptied the magazine of the soldier’s handgun and tossed it aside. “She appeared out of nowhere and kicked the door down of the office we were in.”

“I think I might have triggered an alarm in the system,” Ryder said in an apologetic tone.

Ava searched the corpse, taking the two soldier’s knives for herself. “You did. She’s proof of that.”

Ryder rubbed the back of his neck, his tight caramel curls squashed under a black helmet. His head was to be protected at all costs. Tech people were too invaluable to lose, especially so advanced as Sadira or Ryder.

Zion opened and closed the doors of the closest rooms, shaking his head to indicate he found them abandoned. “Weneed to leave. Others will show up soon. She can’t be the only one the alarm notified.”

We fell into formation with Zion up front, Ava and Eli flanking Ryder from the sides, and me covering their backs. We had to get Ryder out safely.

Once our teams finished sweeping the rest of the building, we disbanded and mixed in with the regular citizens of Ilasall wandering the streets. Black matte trucks with bars on windows flew past us as public transport moved out of the way. The alarm Ryder had triggered had also tipped off the military.

The five of us reached the smallest of the east gates we had planned to get through without a hitch. Nobody questioned the military. It was considered a walking law.

As we were all in soldiers’ uniforms, we ignored the standing guards as we held our palms in front of the scanners. Each beeped and blinked green, recognizing the microchips implanted in our purlicues.

“Don’t you need an escort?” a tall man, with a razor-shaved head, asked as the gates retracted into the wall, the gap wide enough for a truck to pass. “We don’t usually have soldiers marching out on foot.”

This one was clever.

Eli tapped his handgun’s holster with a nail loud enough to bring the guard’s attention to it. “Feeling brave enough today to interrogate the military?”

“Don’t scare him.” Ava shuffled aside, putting me in direct sight of the foolish man. “I’m sure our commander would enjoy nothing more than stringing up his ass in our barracks for thinking he had the right to inquire about our business.”