Page 73 of Deep Cover

“Copy,” Cannon responded. “Proceed with caution. Rorke, cover the back exit. Nobody slips out. Townie, Younger. Go!”

Townie and Younger rushed around the side of the building to secure the front entrance.

“O, Monk, take watch. Romey, you’re with me. Rivers and Lane.”

His heart squeezed at their names being linked.

“On three.”

With his hand on Caryssa’s hip, he rushed her to the side door. Rivers angled his shoulder to break down the door, but something in him told him to try the handle first.

It turned easily, already unlocked.

He caught Cannon’s eye and then Rome’s. All of them registered the same wrongness.

Nobody left a warehouse unsecured, especially not one possibly filled with stolen arms.

The door swung open a sliver. Then he smelled it.

“Smoke!” Caryssa hissed.

Chemical and acrid smoke stuck in the back of his throat. His stomach bottomed out.

“Building’s on fire along the east wall! Someone got here first.” The words blasted out of him.

“Proceed with caution,” was Cannon’s command, and he heeded it.

Rivers pushed the door open the rest of the way and smoke rolled out to meet them, thick and gray. An orange glow came from deep inside.

“No!” Caryssa tried to break past him, and he grasped her arm, holding her back. She whipped to face him, eyes wild. “The evidence—”

“Might already be gone.”

She wrenched in his grip, but he held on.

“Ryss, listen to me!”

“I need to get in there!” Her voice split with a raw desperation. He knew where her mind had gone. The whole case came down to one dangling thread, and it was burning to ash right in front of them.

“Cannon, make the call,” he said grimly, gaze locked on the woman who wouldn’t be satisfied until she had that evidence.

“Rome, Rivers, Lane. Go in fast. You’ve got two minutes. Stick together. The second I say, you’re out. Got it?”

“Copy, Sierra One.” Rivers stared down at Caryssa, waiting for her agreement.

She nodded once, then he pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth and moved. She did the same, planting herself at his side.

The interior was worse than he anticipated. Flames already licked along one wall of stacked crates, climbing higher by the second, feeding off the contents. Smoke pooled thick near the ceiling and rolled through the wide-open area, dropping visibility to almost nothing beyond arm’s length.

“Office!” Caryssa gasped into the comms. She pointed through the haze to the back.

“One minute, Sierra Four,” Cannon counted down.

“Copy,” Rivers responded to the warning.

They pushed forward together. Rome flanked them, sweeping his weapon in slow arcs though it was unlikely anyone would leap out of the billowing smoke to attack them.

Rivers kept one hand locked on Caryssa’s arm, refusing to allow even a foot of distance between them. The deeper they went into the building, the higher the terror licked up his spine.