Page 96 of Lash

This is not good.

I creep back into the trees and make my way to the meeting point, where I find Solomon.

"So?" he asks. "What's the approach like?"

"Not good, Sol," I answer. "Not good at all."

I give him a thorough description of what I'd seen—the bridge, the holding pen, and the eight armed guards, two postedat either end, two in the middle, and two at the gate on the far side of the pen.

When I'm done with my report, Solomon lets out a growling sigh. "Fuck."

"Yes, indeed," I answer. "This is going to be very difficult and very hazardous. When we encountered no patrols and so few guards at Mercado's home, we should have known something was amiss."

Sol nods, scrubbing his face. "Yeah, we were a tad…confident.”

I snort. "I believe you mean to say arrogant."

"Yeah, maybe," he says. "But I feel like that's not without reason. We are all the best of the best, Nico. We can do this."

I wipe rain out the rain out of my eyes. "I agree. We just need a solid plan."

"Let's get back to the others and come up with one, then." Solomon claps me on the shoulder. "C'mon, brother."

We double-time it back to the others and report our findings. For a few moments after our report, everyone is silent, thinking.

"And that's not counting however many guys he may have inside," Kane muses. "A fuck-load of tangos."

"So then, is this just a straight-up frontal assault?" Rev asks. "I mean, the ravine, the bridge, the pen…fuck. This is gnarly. Mercado is nobody’s fool."

"No, he is not," I say. "I do not think that simply attacking the bridge is going to work. There are too many of them in a defensible position. They can just drop back to the estate and pick us off as we attempt to cross the bridge. We need to distract them. I think our plan last time was effective. Pick off the perimeter patrol as a distraction."

"Is scaling the ravine totally out of the question?" Chance asks. "I mean, I knowIfuckin' can't—I'm too goddamn big to sneak up the side of anything. But Lash, you and Scarlettare sneaky and agile. You could go up the back and do some silent elimination to even the numbers a bit and then create a distraction while we hit the front."

I look at Scarlett, but she just shrugs. "I didn't see the ravine, Nico did. If he says it's scalable, I'm down to give it a shot."

I consider what I saw, sighing. "It is…possible. It will be a physically demanding climb—it is steep, with dense undergrowth. To climb it without being seen or heard…" I wince, shaking my head. "It can be done. But it is not without great risk, and will be quite difficult."

Scarlett just shrugs again. "Hey, I'm not scared of hard. Maybe you guys can take potshots at them just to draw their attention away from us."

"And then," Rev adds, “while you two are sneaking around doing murders and creating a diversion, the rest of us take the bridge."

Chance eyes his best friend. "Doing murders?"

Rev chuckles, shrugging. "Heard it on some video Myka watched. Thought it sounded funny."

Scarlett snickers. "I like it. C'mon, Nico. Let's you and me go do some murders." She holds out her fist to me, and I tap mine against it.

"Everyone on board?" Sol asks.

Tatiana raises her hand. "Um. What about me?" She scans the faces of the group. "I don't want to stay here, but I am not like you. I do not have your training or your experience. If I go with you, I am afraid I will be a liability. You cannot afford the distraction of having to babysit me."

Solomon frowns at her. "You aren't wrong. It's not a good idea for you to stay here by yourself, I agree. But you're not trained in assaults like this. I'm not worried about babysitting you, per se, more than just that I don't want to see you get hurt or killed." He holds up a finger. "Wait, hold on."

He goes to the back of the vehicle, rummages in the gear bags, and comes up with a sniper rifle. "We're looking at pretty short distances here, and despite the rain, there's not much wind. Would you feel comfortable using this from the tree line?"

Tatiana takes the rifle from him and ejects the magazine, checks the bolt action, replaces the magazine, points it away and peers through the scope, and then angles the barrel down with a nod. "Yes," she says. "I can do that."

I smile at her encouragingly. "I will help you find a good spot."