The Standoff (Jack Widow Book 12) by Scott Blade

Author:Scott Blade [Blade, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Lion Media
Published: 2019-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

30

Adonis rubbed her forehead, brushed over the bandage on her brow, and closed her eyes tight like her brain would explode from frustration. She thought of that thing people always said about someone who rides horseback for the first time. Something about not the first day or the day after, but the third day was when you felt it.

The gash on her head didn’t hurt; none of her cuts hurt, not compared to what hurt her on the inside. The thought of all the dead agents, the injured, the Athenian children, and Dorsch cut her deep. And they would haunt her for days, weeks, months—hell, probably for the rest of her life. But she couldn’t think about that right now. She couldn’t worry about the dead. She had to focus. She was running out of time. Soon the ATF would replace her; the FBI would get involved, and her chance to make it all right on her own terms would vanish.

Even if she was off-script here, eventually, the FBI would catch up to her. If they found out what she was doing, they’d put her in cuffs. Her window was closing.

She, Shep, and the others were posted up at one of the roadblocks intersecting the borders of Spartan County and Interstate Seventy-Seven, with North Carolina within seeing distance.

Both Adonis and Shep stood outside of his cruiser, parked on the shoulder ahead of long stretches of backed-up cars, crossing over into North Carolina. Swan, James, and Ramirez stood around outside the helicopter that was parked off in an abandoned parking lot for a derelict shopping mall. The stores were all gone. Most of the windows were boarded up and covered in graffiti.

Adonis had told everyone to stop for ten minutes. It wasn’t to take a break, but for her to regroup and think of the next step before she had no steps left.

Ramirez spoke on his phone. Swan and James paced back and forth with their weapons ready. They were more eager than she to get the job done.

Shep sat on the hood of his cruiser, smoking a cigarette, which might’ve been against department regulation for the South Carolina Highway Patrol. They probably had a subsection of a paragraph about dealing with the public that prohibited smoking in public areas like the side of the road. Adonis didn’t know and didn’t care.

North Carolina State Troopers and Highway Patrol cars lined up on the other side as a precaution. South Carolina police handled the stops and checked IDs and inquired of vehicle occupants’ identities and destinations. They took special care of vans and SUVs and any vehicles with multiple male passengers.

The light bar on Shep’s cruiser flashed, bathing Adonis’s dark skin in blue light. She looked around, frozen in her own thoughts. The way she saw it, the only thing she could do until her phone rang again was to get back out there.

They came to the end of their hastened search when they hit the roadblock. They reached the end of the dragnet’s radius and still no sign of Abel, not even a clue.

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