Page 72 of Hurt

“Shouldn’t you guys wait for backup?” Owen asked nervously as he handed Elijah the USB.

“It will be fine. We will try to do this quietly, but it will likely get bad. Work quickly,” Roland told the college student before looking to Elijah.

His junior nodded, and they exited the van together.

Walking side by side, they approached the chain link fence. Ducking, Elijah produced a small pair of wire cutters. Working quickly, he snicked the fence until a section large enough for them to slide through was open. The sharp edges of the metal fence scratched skin and ripped their hair as they slid through, but it was better than trying to climb the razor wire.

It was dusk, and there was a strange gloom between light and dark. Their eyes would have trouble adjusting, but it also meant the Vega guards would struggle too. In a perfect world, they would round the first set of storage units and get to the office that was located in a brick building at the center of the complex without alerting anyone to their presence. But that would be nearly impossible.

Roland felt the familiar thrum of adrenalin, and he let it permeate his system. He would need it to sharpen his senses. Briefly, he wished he had called Willow before they started. He wanted to hear her voice. Recently, Willow had been calling him as soon as she woke up. Hearing her voice rough with sleep was Roland’s newest drug. Often, she would fall back asleep with the call still connected, and Roland would listen to her breathe. It was soothing to the brawler, a softness he had never craved but now that he had it, he couldn’t live without it.

Elijah held up a hand, dropped to his belly, and peered around the corner of one row of storage units. Giving the all-clear, Roland moved forward, and Elijah got to his feet and followed. Two more rows, and they would be at the office.

Their luck ran out by the second. A shout sounded, and Elijah slung a blade through the air to embed itself in the man’s throat. Before his body hit the ground, Elijah had caught him and removed the blade.

Roland met his eyes, and they both understood—this was no longer a stealth mission.

Dropping the body, Elijah took off after Roland. There was more yelling, but they kept their direction. Fighting out in the open when you were outnumbered was a quick way to be surrounded. If they could get into the office, they could control the number of opponents.

Rounding the final corner, they encountered three men. Two had baseball bats, and the third had a handgun.

Elijah flipped a knife in his hand so that the blade was pointed down. Without looking at Roland, they stood shoulder to shoulder. They didn’t need to speak. They had been together for long enough.

With a slight nod of his head, the Weavers took off.

Elijah was smaller and faster. He drew the gunman’s attention. Moving quickly, he accelerated to full speed while the man tracked him. The farther Elijah got, the more desperate he felt. Finally, without seeing a shot, he pulled the trigger. The revolver burst the silence of the evening.

The moment it sounded, Elijah ducked into a roll and, as he came to his feet, leaped straight up and sent a blade flying. Moving faster than the eye could track, it stuck itself in his right shoulder. With the muscle severed, the man dropped the gun.

The moment he did, Roland was there. His right fist, reinforced with the metal on his knuckles, smashed through the cartilage of his nose. Blood spurted out, and the man staggered backward into the wall.

A baseball bat came at Roland, and he just managed to get his left arm up in time to block it from hitting his face. Twisting his hand around it, he took hold of the assailant’s wrist and tugged him off balance. Two hard jabs landed in the Vegas ribcage, and the air whooshed out of his lungs in a rush.

“Duck!” Elijah yelled.

Roland complied, dropping and taking the guy wheezing assailant with him. Two more knives flew out in succession, stabbing the third man in the chest and abdomen. With Roland kneeling, Elijah placed a hand on his shoulder to push himself up and over. Kicking out, his foot slammed into the blade, driving it farther into the man's chest cavity. There was a crunch as the steel severed spine.

Panting, Elijah retrieved the knife from the dead man’s stomach. The second was embedded too deep to remove. Roland muscled the front door open, and they crowded into the small office.

The reception area had two plastic chairs and a dirty fish tank that looked empty of any occupants. It smelled like grease and something Roland couldn’t quite define.

While Roland locked the front door and wedged the chair legs into the handle, Elijah pulled the blinds on the large plate glass window. The main office was through a small door in the back wall. One small frosted window let in a minimal amount of light, but it didn’t matter.

The massive wall of computers pressed up against the inside wall was glowing. All manner of LED’s flickered as the processors whirred.

“Think we found it,” Elijah observed as he pulled the USB from his pocket and squinted to look for a port. Finding one, he slipped it inside and waited until it lit up.

Tapping the comm in his ear, he got Owen’s attention. “Okay, it’s in.”

Roland watched the blinds for shadows. There was no way every Vega in a mile radius had not heard the gunshot. It wouldn’t take them long to congregate in the office.

“Was it too easy?” Elijah asked from where he was watching the lights blink.

“Mmn,” Roland assented.

The entire Vega operations—legal and illegal—were stored on this computer network. This was the heart of their enterprises. So, why did they have amateurs guarding it? The Weavers had a similar system, but it was far more heavily guarded. Only Grant, Roland, and Wallace knew where it was. Roland had a bad feeling about this.

Elijah pushed some hair out of his face and began looking around the room. The wall catty-corner to the bank of computers had a set of cheap-looking cabinets. In the first few, he found some unopened cleaning supplies. As he opened the third cabinet, his comm squawked.