Page 55 of Crosscurrent

"She's in the lobby."

Gabe didn't slow down.

Beside him, Cara had her phone propped on the dash with the camera feed live — second-floor parking structure, the pillar where Skye had been standing four minutes ago. The pillar was empty. It had been empty for three of those four minutes. They'd watched her walk away from her overwatch position on the camera and they had still been five blocks out.

"Floor?" Wade asked from the back seat.

"Working it."

Gabe took the corner into the Haven Cove Inn's east lot a beat past comfortable. Wet asphalt hissed under the tires. He killed the headlights at the dumpster line and rolled the last forty feet in dark.

"Got her." Tom again. "First floor, west wing. Corridor camera caught her ninety seconds ago. She was walking, not running. Toward Diego's room."

Ninety seconds ago.

"Wade," Gabe said. "Lobby. Up the east stairs."

"On me."

Wade was out of the SUV before it stopped moving. Gabe killed the engine and came out the driver's side with his service weapon already in hand. Cara matched him on the passenger side, fast and quiet.

The south side of the motel ran shadow-on-shadow — service lane between the building and the bait shop next door, one yellow security lamp doing more work for the dumpsters than for anyone trying to see. Cara was at the service door before Gabe was at the corner. He took the right of the door. She took the left.

His earpiece clicked. Wade, low: "Stairs."

The plan was for Wade to clear the corridor. Gabe and Cara would block the only door Ortiz could use that didn't dump him in the lobby. Tom would monitor the cameras. Five minutes from breach to retrieval.

Now the plan was get there.

Inside Room 114, fifteen feet from where Gabe was standing, the curtain glowed amber. A lamp had come on. Bedside, by the angle.

He keyed the channel. "Light's on. He's still in there."

"Wade?" Cara whispered.

"Twenty feet from the room."

Gabe heard the sound through the wall before Tom or Wade did — muffled, contained.

Then a second sound. A shorter one. Two beats apart, the second smaller than the first.

"Wade," Gabe said.

"I hear it. Moving."

Cara didn't say anything. She'd already shifted her stance — weight forward, weapon ready, sightline on the service door instead of the window. The window was where the curtain was. The service door was where Diego would come out if he was coming out fast.

Three seconds passed.

The service door blew open.

Diego Ortiz hit the alley moving. Black duffel, dark jacket, his left leg favoring badly enough that Gabe clocked the limp before he clocked the face. Diego cleared the doorframe with one hand on the jamb to stabilize — and saw Gabe.

The fraction of a second when Diego's eyes found him was the longest moment in the alley. Diego registered Gabe, found Cara, found the blocked primary, recalculated. No surprise in his face. Just the small motion of a professional revising on the fly.

He cut left.

"Contact." Gabe was already moving.