Trap. Stop. If they bite you… Wyatt broke off.

Sorry, man, they’re just too little to leave all alone in the cold. I already feel like a monster for killing the soldiers in front of them.

Chapter 16

Wyatt rubbed his hands together, generating heat. His palms grew hot and began to glow. He knelt down, cocking his head to one side, listening to the sounds emitting below him, coming from the laboratory. In spite of the “soundproofing,” his acute hearing and cat sonar picked up more movement than there should have been. He knew the soldiers assigned to the lab had a recreation area right next to their workstation, but the rustles were in the lab below him, where the techs worked, not where they slept or relaxed.

He sighed. Nothing was ever easy and few missions ever came off without a hitch. For the sake of his family and his children, he needed to get into the laboratory, soldiers or no soldiers. He had known all along why Pepper and the children had been put in his path. He was too intelligent not to know, but that didn’t mean he’d back down. He just had to be faster and outwit Whitney at his own game.

The soldiers in the third-story laboratory were lying in wait for anyone who would come to rescue the two children. Trap had run into two soldiers in the holding cells. Without a doubt, Whitney had used the babies as bait for Wyatt.

Wyatt listened carefully, noting every position. The soldiers had grown restless, and who could blame them? It was difficult to stay on high alert for days. The civilian guards had dismissed the danger all too readily – other than Larry and Jim, who had maintained their job as best they could by themselves.

The men in the laboratory had to be trained soldiers from Whitney’s personal army. He’d smuggled them inside and kept them on alert waiting for Wyatt to make his move. Whitney clearly had expected him to wait for reinforcements or to secure his grandmother’s home before coming after the two children.

Wyatt was hot-tempered and sometimes impulsive – such as when he’d joined the GhostWalker program after losing Joy. Whitney underestimated him, plain and simple. And he’d underestimated the loyalty of his team members as well.

Wyatt chose a corner where there was no sound at all. There had to be storage closets, and according to the original blueprints, one was built into that corner. Whether or not it had been changed was anyone’s guess, but it was his best bet for point of entry.

I’m goin’ in first, Draden. Stay back until I call you in. We’ve got company.

He felt Pepper’s gasp. Soldiers? How many? You can’t go in alone. Wyatt, please, no.

She’d never said “please” to him. She’d never sounded so anxious over him.

This is what I do, babe. Get our girls out of there.

Wyatt laid his palms on the concrete, pressing hard. At the same time, he uttered a low hum, a sound that couldn’t be heard by humans. He waited while the energy built around him. The pressure built until he wanted to scream. His head felt as if it might explode. He slammed his palms down again, pushing the pulse through the cement. As a large chunk disintegrated, he “felt” for the large chunks of debris and stilled them in midair, even as he muffled the sound.

It took a great deal of concentration to accomplish all three tasks nearly simultaneously and his brain actually hurt. He breathed away the pain and slowly floated the debris to the floor. He kept track of the movement of the soldiers in the laboratory. He’d counted five of them scattered around the room. Each moved differently, some more restless than others, but all of them shifted positions often.

No one came to investigate the hole in the roof. He peered down. Below him, he saw several brooms and a mop bucket on wheels. He’d caught a break – the original blueprints hadn’t been altered there on the third floor. He dropped down fast, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, as silent as a stalking cat.

Light spilled under the crack of the door. The laboratory was lit up, but the windows had been blacked out so from the outside, the room appeared dark, as if no one was in it. Wyatt knew better. He stayed very still, his cat sonar stretching to find every source of light in the room and mark where the soldiers were waiting.

There were five of them, but they had no idea he was inside the building, or that his team was making their attempt to rescue the children. To the soldiers it was like every other day they’d stayed in the laboratory, under orders to wait for an attack, and that meant they were bored, tired and not paying much attention.

Even now he heard the constant rustling as they shifted position and occasionally whispered to one another. They had no idea the civilian guards had left their posts to attend a birthday party or that down below, in the cells, two of their small army were already dead.

He went over every detail in his mind, planning out every move until his body knew what it was supposed to do. Wyatt exploded out of the closet, moving with blurring speed, going for each of the overhead lights, running up the walls to smash the bulbs, landing on a table and springing to the next light.

He knew the precise location of each heat source and he went after each of the lights first until the room was plunged into darkness. With the windows blacked out, he could see clearly with his cat’s vision, but the soldiers would have a much more difficult time, especially those first few seconds. He utilized those precious seconds while the bored and stiff soldiers were shocked and confused. He hit the first one directly in the face, coming off a table with both boots, smashing hard.

He heard the terrible crunch of bones breaking and the man went down. Wyatt kept moving, landing on the floor and springing toward the location of the next nearest soldier. He ran up the wall and launched himself, dropping behind the man who had crouched down and was coherent enough to bring up his rifle. He couldn’t fire because he couldn’t see, but he was ready.