Splinter (The Machinists Book 2) (22 page)

“Hey,” Allyn said as she neared. “You ready?”

She took in a heavy breath. “Yeah.” Then with a long look, she scanned the inside of the cabin for what would likely be the last time.

Allyn wrapped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a small hug, sharing in her silent goodbye. It was a sad way to leave the cabin behind. It had always been a place of peace and solitude, where they could escape the summer heat and crowds, to enjoy in the spring when the trees and wild flowers were in bloom. It had been a place to find oneself.

And I did
, Allyn realized.
One last time
.

“Come on.” He turned for the door.

Kendyl resisted slightly, taking in one last image of the cabin as if she were snapping a mental picture, then she stepped outside.

Allyn pulled the door closed.

Chapter 25

T
hey arrived tired, stiff, and sore—hardly the way Allyn would have wanted to begin the risky operation. They parked half a mile south of the manor at an abandoned forestry site and proceeded on foot into the dense wood, using only memory to guide them.

Unfamiliar with the woods, Allyn stumbled through the underbrush, snapping twigs and fallen branches, tripping over vines and exposed roots like a drunken bear. It drew irritated looks from some, amused grins from others, and indifference from most. Allyn didn’t understand the irritation. By the time they made it to the manor, the sun would be high enough that they would lose their greatest advantage. Besides, even the quietest among them were far from silent, and with nearly two-dozen of them hiking through the forest, the noise had swollen into something far louder than a nocturnal predator seeking sleep.

A handful of magi had remained with the children and vans, ready to bring them to the manor once it was secure. Nolan was at Allyn’s side, the only one among them who was louder and clumsier than he was. Instead of donning the magi compression armor that the rest of them wore, Nolan had opted for a bulletproof vest, which he wore over his starched white shirt. It made the dark outline of his torso unnaturally bulky and disproportionate, as if he were a body builder who’d skipped too many leg days. Kendyl was at Allyn’s other side, and she slipped through the underbrush with a grace that Allyn could only yearn for. She had always been more comfortable in the forest than he was.

I don’t care what she thinks. She belongs among the magi every bit as much as I do. Maybe more.

Their force trudged down the hillside, coming to the bottom of a shallow valley, where a creek overflowed with mountain runoff. Atop the next hillside, and probably another quarter mile to the north, would be the manor. Allyn pictured the top of the hill as an enormous plateau buffeted on three sides by the creek. After using a fallen tree as a bridge to cross the roaring waters, they spent another hour ascending the hillside. Even then, the manor was another quarter mile off.

Allyn’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of it. Stadium lights surrounded the perimeter of the manor, so that even in the dead of night, it was well lit. The bodies had long since been taken to the morgue, but much of the manor appeared as it had the night they had fled. A few of the exterior stone walls stood a few feet above the ground, gray stone black with soot and ash. Rising from the ashes like a gravestone was a section of the grand staircase that had once been the entrance of the manor.

The library, though, had been dug out, and a mound of fresh soil circled the structure, forming a ridge and obscuring it from view. Unable to see the library, Allyn could imagine it: a long rectangular concrete building excavated from the ground as if it were an ancient city on an archeological dig, with ladders leading down from the ridge.

The rest of the magi had stretched out to either side of Allyn in a long line parallel to the tree line. They breathed a collective breath as one people, one Family, witnessing the destruction of all they knew. It was the conscious, rhythmic breathing of someone holding back emotion. Allyn didn’t need to ask how they felt. He knew because he’d been through something similar when he’d returned to his condo.

A home is more than a series of rooms connected by hallways and held under one roof. It’s a collection of memories and emotions. A testament created between the house itself and those who lived inside it. A relationship. The McCollum Family wasn’t looking at the charred remains of brick, stone, and wood; they were looking at the corpse of a loved one, someone most of them had known their entire lives.

Mourning with the Family felt wrong, as if he were a
plus one
at a funeral. He withdrew and found Jaxon with his back to him, peering into the forest. The early morning darkness always played games with Allyn’s eyes. Strange shadows. Movement. Noise. A forest was never truly quiet or still, and the long shadows cast by the rising sun made it worse.

“Where are the rest?” Allyn asked, stopping at Jaxon’s side.

“They’ll be here,” Jaxon said.

And he was right. A few minutes later, a pair of shadows broke from the rest, and Nyla and Ren emerged. The two women couldn’t have been any more different. Nyla was elegant. She walked confidently, with her head up, as if she already had it all—or had nothing to lose. She wasn’t the same moody, cold-hearted woman in mourning that he had first met, but he didn’t believe the quiet, methodical, duty-driven woman before him was the real Nyla, either. Whether he would ever meet the real Nyla was still to be determined.

Ren, on the other hand, was a viper. Sleek. Slender. Silent. Her eyes quickly assessed the pair of men in front of her, and to Allyn’s surprise, she didn’t relax.

“You’re late,” Ren said. “Daylight is only an hour off.”

“We had an unexpected visitor,” Jaxon said. “Give me your report.”

“Three patrol vehicles,” Nyla said. “Six officers. They form a triangle around the grounds. Two at the front. Another with the library.”

“Any communication?”

“Between the vehicles?” Ren asked.

Jaxon nodded.

“Not that we’ve seen.”

Frowning, Jaxon looked to Nyla, perhaps hoping for a different answer. She shook her head.

“What about patrols?” Jaxon asked. “Shift changes?”

“None,” Ren said. “The only movement we’ve seen out of any of them is to take a piss—nothing of note.”

“Their entire operation is running off a generator,” Nyla said.

“Where?” Jaxon asked.

“South side of the manor.”

“That’s one of our first objectives, then,” Jaxon said. “We lose it, and we lose the library.”

“You think they’ll sabotage the generator?” Allyn asked.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Jaxon said. “But I know if I wanted to stop someone from getting into something, I’d have a plan to lock it down. Form up into your squads. We’re moving forward.”

Allyn watched as Nolan strode down the gravel driveway, toward the two police vehicles that barricaded the front entrance to the manor. Unlike traditional squad cars, these were large black SUVs with tinted windows and reinforced bumpers. Aggressive assault vehicles. Nolan disappeared behind the stone fountain at the center of the driveway, and for the split second it took him to reappear, Allyn saw their entire plan unraveling. He was putting a lot of trust in Nolan—alone and striding up to men who used to be his comrades, nothing prevented Nolan from alerting them to the McCollum Family’s presence.

But they’d needed a distraction, and Nolan seemed the most logical.

Nolan buttoned the top button of his jacket and quickly wiped away the dried dirt. It was probably some kind of nervous habit. Allyn sucked in a sharp breath as he saw movement inside the vehicles. For all his reservations about sending Nolan in alone to distract the officers, he would know if he’d been betrayed rather quickly.

The officers jumped out of the vehicles, using the open doors for cover, guns drawn and pointed at Nolan. The deep bass of the officer’s voice didn’t carry well across the grounds to the tree line where Allyn and the more than half a dozen others were hiding, but his commanding tone did. The officers knew Nolan was a suspect.

“We move on my mark,” Leira said.

Nolan stopped abruptly and threw his hands in the air. The two officers on the edge of the line advanced. More commands. Nolan dropped to his knees.

“Go!”

Allyn dashed across the manor grounds. The plan was for Nolan to distract the officers while Allyn and the rest of the squad snuck up behind them. It worked flawlessly.

The two remaining officers didn’t hear their approach until the squad was nearly upon them. They turned, guns swiveling, but Leira and Nyla were too fast. In a blink, the two officers were on the ground, and the clerics were already moving to the next.

The advancing officers were nearly upon Nolan, guns still drawn and barking for him to put his face to the ground.

Nolan complied but not before his eyes flickered over the officers’ shoulders and toward the advancing squad. A squat, balding officer, nearly wider than he was tall, followed Nolan’s gaze.

“Shit,” Allyn said as the officer spun on him. The officer’s expression cycled through surprise, alarm, and finally, recognition.

Allyn wielded, and at the sight of the red tendrils, the officer’s face snapped back to alarm. Allyn knocked the gun out of his hand with a static charge then jumped and used his forward momentum to drive his heels into the man’s soft chest. The officer grunted as he stumbled and fell onto his back. Allyn hit the ground, rolled, and continued forward—but Ren was already there. The air concussed in front of her, throwing the final officer away from Nolan and sliding him across the gravel driveway.

Leira was on him half a beat later, forcing him under.

The magi squad went still, listening for the sounds of alarm. Jaxon had said there was a third police vehicle behind the library—if any of the four officers had called for backup or had alerted the remaining officers of Nolan’s surprise appearance…

The grounds remained silent. They breathed a collective sigh of relief. The first part of the assault was over.

“Good work,” Allyn said.

Ren and Leira made short work of using the officers’ own cuffs to lock their hands behind their backs then stashed them inside the police assault vehicles. Once done, the squad gathered at the base of the stairs. Liam’s eyes were alive with excitement. Allyn could almost feel it exuding from him, and it was contagious. They were so close.

The manor had been built atop a small rise, which hid the magi from the remaining officers on the other side.

“We need to move,” Leira said. “We’ve already been here for too long.”

Allyn, Nyla, Ren, and Liam nodded in silent agreement, and Leira quickly led their squad into the remains of the manor. Since the grounds surrounding it were well lit and offered little in the way of cover, they had decided that sneaking through the interior of the manor was their best chance of moving unseen.

The air was thick with the smell of smoke, which intensified as each step kicked up more ash. They passed through room after room, stepping over half walls and rubble.

Allyn returned to the night it had burned. Tiled floors slick with blood, sweat, and urine. Paint bubbling under the intense heat. Screams. Cries. Agony.

He saw the faces and lifeless eyes of those who had burned with the manor. Trevin. Griffin. Ari. Nobody would ever see them again, but like so many other things about that night, Allyn would never forget them.

Leira cursed and quickly dropped behind what remained of a wall for cover. Without command, the rest of the squad followed, hiding behind whatever they could or dropping to the ashy ground.

Allyn leaned against something protruding through the ash. It hummed with the dull echo of something hollow. “Have we been seen?”

Leira shook her head. “I don’t think so—but I can see the library.”

Allyn resisted the urge to see for himself. “What do we do?”

“Small groups,” she said. “Get Liam and Nolan to the library. Ren and I will make sure you aren’t seen.”

Allyn nodded and waved Liam and Nolan over. “We’re making for the library.”

“There’s a ladder in the northeast corner,” Nolan said. “It’s the only way down.”

“Okay,” Allyn said. “We make for the ladder then. Stay low and stay close. Wait for my mark.”

Allyn stood, surveying the scene. The library was maybe fifty feet away, marked only by a ridge of ash and soil that rose four or five feet above the ground. The police SUV was parked behind it, the tops of the tinted windows barely visible above the ridge. Allyn traced a path that would lead them through the former dining room—recognizable only by the crystal chandelier on the ground, caked so thick in soot that only one or two crystals still sparkled—and into the dead zone, where all of the debris had been cleared. There, they would be entirely in the open. Thirty feet without cover. They would have to rely solely on speed and luck.

“We go one at a time,” Allyn said, turning to Nolan.

“I don’t think I like that idea.”

“One person might be able to slip through,” Allyn said, “but three? And what happens when we make it to the ladder? Two of us wait while the other climbs down? No. We go one at a time.”

Nolan took an irritated breath but nodded. “I’ll go first. Once down, I’ll move the ladder so it’s along this side of the ridge. Should save you some time searching.”

“Good thinking,” Allyn said.

Nolan replaced Allyn at the edge of the wall, waiting, ready to break for the ridge. Allyn and Liam found separate holes in the wall to watch through. Though the police vehicle remained still, Allyn couldn’t help but think that the odds of them all crossing the barren ground without being seen were slim. Fortunately, he didn’t have time to second-guess himself before Nolan broke into a run.

Allyn pressed his face close to the wall—the bubbled paint and blackened timber were rough against his skin—and watched Nolan’s dark figure dash across the uneven ground. He’d taken his black suit jacket off again, but the white starched shirt was largely hidden under the tactical vest. The SUV remained lifeless. In a matter of seconds, Nolan was more than halfway across the dead zone, and Allyn still hadn’t seen any movement inside the vehicle.