Page 66 of Tangled

Tristan leaned in. “Wait, is your tracker on Anjali’s phone?”

“Yeah, I already confirmed she’s still at the hotel and in the same approximate place. I checked right before I left. Her phone battery is getting low.”

Behind Tristan, Blaise said, “That is useful.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you could track her before?”

Colleen tilted her head at him. “You were so proud of yourself for your video hack. I didn’t want to one-up you.”

The other guys caught up and stood around the two of them whilst they argued.

Tristan sighed at Colleen. “It might get dangerous. I didn’t want you here.”

She tilted her head when she looked up at him. “Well, that’s too bad, huh?”

“You arenotgoing into that hotel room.”

“Likehell,I’m not. My best friend is inside. She has to be freaking out.”

Tristan said, “Colleen, let the professionals do their work.”

“I’m a country girl. I can shoot a deer eight hundred yards away with a proper scope. The wind is light tonight. Maybe nine hundred yards. And I didn’t get rattled when some alt-right lunatic pulled a Lugar on me in the feed store because we were selling seeds to hippies.”

Really?That was interesting.

One of the nameless men leaned in. “How much weapons experience do ye have?”

Colleen told him, “I’m better with a rifle than a handgun, but I use my sights. My dad put a twenty-two in my hand when I was five.”

Huh. Good to know.

The guy said to the group, and his gentle Irish accent became apparent, “She’ll go in with the target retrieval team in the second wave after the room is secure. It’ll calm the hostages if they see someone they know and make it easier to gain their cooperation. Someone give her a sidearm.” He turned back to Colleen. “I’m Eian Summerhays. Don’t worry. I’ll be at your side and in front of you the whole time. This will be a blitzkrieg-type operation, and the hostages will be disoriented during extraction. Your role will be to convince the subjects to come with us. Welcome to Delta Team, miss.”

Tristan wanted to step in front of her.

Colleen smiled up at that other guy, her teeth shining under her visor-like goggles. “I’m Colleen Frost. It’s apleasureto meet you.”

Tristan’s molars ground together in his mouth, and the hand gripping his phone slipped as he nearly crushed the metal case.

37

Extraction

Tristan

Tristan sat on a camp-stool in the surveillance tent, watching browser windows from twelve different viewpoints tiled over three enormous monitors and rubbing the raw indentations the night-vision goggles had left around his eyes. Because they were inside a tent, the light was low, but they could take off their NVGs.

One browser window showed the feed from Jian’s phone inside the hotel room. It appeared to be lying face-up on a coffee table, showing the ceiling and Sergey’s shoes occasionally peeking in from one side of the frame.

Earlier, they’d heard men speaking Russian, but now the rhythmic buzz sounded like snoring.

A game show host called out letters.

A different browser window displayed people wearing combat gear and inching, prone, over a rough surface. The visual field was scribbled in charcoal gray and acid green tones, as the feed was through someone’s night-vision goggles. A line of bright light appeared under the fingertips of the person wearing the camera. “In position.”

Blaise, who had kept his hoodie draped over his face, whispered into a microphone, “Alpha Team is in position.”

In another browser window, which appeared to be a feed from the hotel’s closed-circuit security cameras, four unusually muscular frat boys wearing jeans roughhoused and shoved each other as they stumbled toward the elevators. Their untucked tee-shirts dragged oddly over bulges around their belts and hips. One waved a hotel keycard at the reception area as they passed.