Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
“Someone was a good boy and read his manual on small unit tactics,” Roman murmured.
This wasn’t the way he would’ve gone about the raid, but he had a feeling they’d decided to bet on intimidation and surprise. One moment the woods were empty, the next there was a trained, well-armed squad taking position by the house. It would give most people pause.
He wasn’t most people.
Roman put a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
The leader was tall and light-skinned, with a square jaw, short nose, and grayish stubble on his chin. Thick neck, some roundness in the face—well-fed. He hadn’t been taking any long treks through the deep wilderness with a fifty-pound rucksack, eating MREs and pinecones recently. This was a mercenary, successful but gone a bit soft.
The leader squinted at the Striga skull on top of the stop sign, looking smug and slightly bored. The rest of his crew looked about the same—too much time at the gym, too much love for tactical sunglasses, too secure in their badassery. Active duty in the line of fire made people mean, lean, and half-feral, like starved wolves. These weren’t wolves. They were guard dogs. Every single one of those guys knew where their next meal was coming from and where they would be sleeping that night.
Roman could practically hear what they were thinking. This is overkill. We are better than hunting down a kid and dealing with some jerkwad in a house in the woods. But we’re high-speed professionals. We’ll handle it, and we’ll look sharp while doing it.
The leader’s mouth moved. Roman read his lips: “Cute.”
Aw, sweetness, if you think that’s cute, you’ll love what happens next.
The leader flicked his fingers. The SEAL-wannabe on his right with a full-on beard pulled a machete from a sheath on his waist and banged on the stop sign with it.
Knock, knock, knock.
“We have guests,” Roman said.
Kor smiled, baring needle fangs.
The mercenary knocked again.
“I guess we’ll have to go out and say hello. They came out all this way, we might as well be neighborly.”
Kor stretched and hopped down. Roman picked up his coffee mug, stood up, and went out onto the porch.
The leader took in his ensemble of sweatpants, sweatshirt, and Eeyore slippers and gave him a big grin. “Hey there!”
“Can I help you gentlemen with something?” Roman took a gulp of his coffee.
“We’re here for the boy and his dog.”
No pleasantries. Straight to the point. They were certain the kid was in the house, and they were sure they could take him out of it.
“Is that so?” Roman asked.
“This doesn’t have to be complicated,” the leader said. “We’re not going to hurt him. We’re just going to take him back to his family. It’s not safe for him to be running around the woods with the magic up.”
“So he’s a runaway?”
“He’s a kid. He overreacted. His family is worried and wants him back.”
Heh. “Do they now? And they hired you to bring him back? You get a lot of jobs finding lost kids?”
The leader shrugged. “You got me. This isn’t something we normally do, but who am I to tell rich people what to do with their money? A job is a job.”
“And you needed Honeycombers for it?”
The shorter of the trackers grinned. Honeycombers lived in a former trailer park warped by magic. Everyone with a crumb of common sense had moved out when the trailers started splitting like dividing cells. It was a place where people took a wrong step, walked into a wall, and were never seen again. Those who stayed remained because the Honeycomb was lawless, and they liked it that way.
The Honeycombers weren’t picky about who paid them. They would do almost anything if the price was right. If you had to hire them, you were up to no good.
The leader smiled. “Whatever gets the job done. Look, you seem like a man who values his privacy. You live all the way out here, miles from town. You don’t like to be bothered.”
Nice how he worked that threat in there. You live all alone and nobody will hear you scream. Roman smiled into his coffee mug.
“Oh, I’m not bothered.”
“Let us take the kid off your hands, and you can keep being not bothered and continue with your holiday decorating.” The leader nodded at the half-finished Christmas tree. “It will be like we were never here.”
Now that part was true.
“Sounds good. But I just have a few questions.”
“Shoot.”
Oh, I will. “What’s the dog’s name?”
The leader didn’t say anything.
“See, finding runaways is one of the things I do. When a family wants their child back, they trip all over themselves trying to tell you everything about them. Before I leave the parents’ house, I know the kid’s middle name. I know their pets’ names, their best friends, their grandmother’s name and address. I know what they were wearing the last time they were seen and their favorite food.”