Actually, I kept several; this place was my now my home away from home. Nature of the job; I was glad I’d found a guy who could understand that. And speaking of which…

  Dylan followed me out of the staff room. He was leaning against the wall next to my bunk, when I got back from the showers.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?” he asked, and I glanced past him, making sure the hall was clear, as I walked into the room.

  “Sure do,” I said, sitting on the bunk. “You get any sleep last night?”

  “Right up until Shay said you’d gone into the nightclub alone…through the back door…”

  Shay. The Mouse. Right. Dylan went on like I wasn't scrambling to put things together. Maybe he really didn't know.

  "He’d seemed pretty sure something was going to happen, and he hadn’t been able to get a hold of Blakeney.”

  Shay—the Mouse. Blakeney—Red. I made the translations in my head, not wanting to tell Dylan I had a whole new way of thinking about the team, since I’d temporarily forgotten their names.

  “So, you’re out of time, too, huh?”

  Dylan shrugged.

  “The whole team is,” he said. “None of us should be going out tonight.”

  “But we’ll miss the bust!” I protested.

  “We could hand it to another team.”

  “We don’t have another team!”

  “Yeah. So… Are you really?”

  “Am I really what?”

  “Planning on going to sleep.”

  I’d been wondering when he’d pick up on the fact I was wearing night cam and still in my boots.

  “After the warehouse.”

  “You think the kid will be okay?”

  “Nope, but I need Dianne’s data, and we need to cut her in.”

  “Agreed.”

  We headed back to the office, but Blondie wasn’t at her desk. She’d left a note on mine.

  Had to go. Shay says he thinks the kid’s in trouble, and we need to talk to Red.

  Had to go. I had that sinking feeling we all get just as our world goes to pieces. I handed the note to Tall-Dark, and headed for the door. Halfway there, I realized I’d left my gear behind. Maybe I was too tired to be doing this.

  I turned back to get my stuff, just in time to catch the vest, Dylan tossed at me. The keys to our car were dangling from his teeth, and he was carrying the rest of what I’d forgotten. He was also talking to someone over a head comms—probably the team. I caught the head set he tossed me, after I’d shrugged on the vest.

  Yeah. He was going to make a great team leader. And I was kinda miffed about losing him.

  We made it, in double-quick time, to where Shay had parked his car—caught a bus, my ass! Dylan knew a back way onto the old CSIRO grounds, and we were hoping it was something Blondie hadn’t had time to tell the team about, even if our luck wasn’t holding that well.

  Dylan pulled up under a stand of pines, sans headlights, and we got out, night goggles in place. He still hadn’t been able to raise Blondie, or the Mouse, or any of the rest of the team, but he said he had back-up on the way.

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  Back-up, hey? I liked the sound of that.

  I liked it even more, about ten seconds later, as a half dozen black-suited figures stepped out from the pine shadows.

  “Not a muscle,” one ordered, her voice as close to a growl as I’ve heard coming from a human throat.

  I slowly raised my hands. I had two guns pointed at my chest, could see the third one in the speaker’s grip. Behind me, from the other side of the car, I could hear more of them closing in on Dylan. Well, damn! This was one short-lived raid.

  “P.O.S.?” we were asked, after a fifteen-minute hike into the warehouse.

  Don’t ask me which way we’d come; the dust runners had blindfolded us, just as soon as they’d disarmed us. And none of us were happy.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Small team for an op like this,” the team lead said, taking off the blind-fold, so I could see the others.

  I glared at Blondie, Mouse, and the Albino. The Albino looked mortified, and a little bit defiant, but neither the Mouse nor Blondie would meet my eye. They knew they were in it—but deep.

  “Some of us went off half-cocked.”

  What I really wanted to know was where Red had ended up…and if Tall-Dark’s back-up was going to arrive anytime soon. I didn’t dare ask him, and he was giving nothing away. Our captors turned away, going right back to work.

  The fact they’d stuck us in the warehouse proper, where we could see the still, the pixies, and the cauldrons they were going to cook the little creatures down in, was not a good sign. If Red or Dylan’s help didn’t arrive soon, we were all dead.

  I experimented with the handcuffs around my wrists, but all I succeeded in doing was making them rattle against the bollard and chain they’d been attached to. That earned me a swift look, a double check of the cuffs, and a slap upside the head.

  “Don’t.”

  That instruction told me all I needed to know. It was delivered without rancor or rage. There was nothing personal in the cuff check, or the slap. What we saw, or didn’t, didn’t matter. Our fates were already set.

  I glanced over at Dylan, but he gave no sign he’d seen, or understood the meaning of it. I looked across at Blondie, who was cuffed to a row of bollards opposite. She was frowning, and I knew she was onto the implications. The Albino, cuffed next to her was looking worried. Rookie that he was, he knew it was bad, just not exactly how bad, so of course he was thinking the worst.

  Poor kid. I wished I could reassure him, but the worst was about the size of it. Mouse was sitting, propped up against the bollard beside The Albino, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head tilted slightly back, eyes closed. If I hadn’t known him better, I’da thought he was catching a few zees, before he met that permanent sleep, but that wasn’t like him.

  He was either unconscious, aping sleep, or dead. I stared at the Mouse a little harder, holding my breath, until I saw his chest rise and fall. Even then, I watched it do that another two or three times, before I relaxed. He was waiting, conserving his energy for whatever chance he had. I decided to keep an eye on what was going on. The least I could do was see the danger coming.

  I watched as dust runners tatted up like bikers, hefted boxes and carried them over to where these great, metal cauldrons were all lined up in a row. And then I watched as each one of them gave the box he was carrying a series of hard shakes designed to disorient or concuss any pixie inside. These guys knew what they were doing, all right.

  The bikers worked in teams. When the boxes they were holding had been well-shaken, one of them lifted the lid to the cauldron, and the one right behind him upended the box over the top. I caught glimpses of glittering wings and tiny bodies tumbling into each pot. The biker holding the lid kept a close eye on the pot’s contents, standing ready to slam the lid down, the minute any of their victims showed signs of escaping.

  None of them did, and I watched box, after box, after box, carried, shaken, and tipped, before being tossed into a growing pile at the end of the warehouse. It made me feel sick. I took a good look around, taking note of how many workers, how many boxes, and the size of this particular still. It was one of the most professional operations I’d ever seen—and one of the largest.

  When I’d had a good look at it all, I sighed and tilted my head back, and that was when I realized there were narrow windows set high in the walls, and a catwalk that ran around the upper walls of the entire building. There were more dust runners on the catwalk, patrolling. I watched them look out over the warehouse floor, and then out the windows.

  Well, that was going to make things awkward for anyone approaching.

  Once I’d scanned the inside of the building, I set about trying to keep tabs on everything going on inside it. Across from me, Blondie was doing the same, and The Albino was proving a quick learner. I saw him glance around the team, and then follow where Blondie and I were looking. If we could get him out of this, he might turn out okay.

  The slow burn of my handcuffs heating up came as a bit of a surprise, and I ducked my head to hide my surprise, also to hide the look of pain, I was pretty sure I couldn’t conceal.

  “Sh!” Blondie’s short, sharp hiss of reprimand, made me glance over at her.

  She was glaring at the Albino, whose eyes were as wide as saucers. He looked across at me, as though for confirmation, and I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Beside him, The Mouse’s eyes suddenly flew open, and he sucked air in a gasp of shock.

  The sudden tension and short exchange between us did not go unnoticed. Two of the dust runners came down and walked between us, staring at us intently. I looked up at the nearest one, and managed a respectable glare. He smiled in a way that sent chills down my spine, and then he stooped towards me.