Resistance (The Institute Series Book 2) Read Free

panicked tone. We don’t wait for Jo to respond before we leave the restaurant and start heading back to where we met up with the team a few streets over.
    “You’re welcome,” Drew says.
    “I’m sorry, am I meant to thank you? I was about to tell her I was sick so I could leave. I didn’t need you.”
    “Oh please, you and I both know you would’ve stayed out of guilt from leaving them understaffed. You’re too nice.”
    “I am not.” He’s actually probably right, but I’m not going to admit that and give him the satisfaction.
    We get back to Costello and the van and climb in the back. “So, I’m guessing the arrest didn’t go well then?” Costello asks as he starts up the engine.
    “No, it didn’t go at all,” Lynch replies, crossing her arms over her chest, annoyed at our failure.
    “So that’s it?” I ask. “What do we do now?”
    “We’ll have to get her from her home,” Lynch answers. “The same plan will work. You can use some story about hearing she was sick and you wanted to see if she was alright.”
    I try to protest but Drew beats me to it, “You want to send in an unarmed, unprotected newbie, by herself? No. I won’t allow that – it’s too dangerous.”
    I really want to yell at him for standing up for me – I don’t need him to do that – I can do it myself. But I agree with him, and if I dispute that, I may end up unwittingly volunteering to go in.
    “Well you aren’t the one in charge, are you, Jacobs? She’ll be fine. It’s not like the target has an aggressive ability,” Lynch replies.
    “There has to be another way,” Drew argues.
    “We can take them by surprise,” Bek chimes in. “We surround the house, Eugene can break down the front door, forcing the target and her parents to take the only escape route out the back where the rest of us will be waiting.”
    Lynch thinks about it for a moment. “Okay. Leo, Allira, and Eugene, you take the front, the rest of us will wait out the back.  Allira, we can give you a protection vest, but you haven’t had any special weapons training so we can’t give you a gun. You’ll just have to stay behind Leo and follow his lead.”
    I’m fitted into a vest as we pull up just short of Licia’s street. This all seems to be happening so fast. Why do I even have to go in at all?
    “Are we ready?” Costello asks. Lynch looks to all of us, and takes our silence as agreement.
    “Let’s do this,” she replies. “Move silently and move quickly.”
    The van takes off again slowly, and continues to creep along the street until coming to a stop in front of Licia’s neighbour’s house. We file out, Lynch, Bek and Drew run swiftly, with light footing; it’s almost elegant to watch. They disappear around the back of the house while Jack, Leo, and I cautiously approach the stoop to the front porch. 
    Jack takes out the door with one swift kick. He raises his gun and checks the first room, before moving onto the second as Leo and I enter and double check the first room. It’s awkward, I’m pushed up against his back, kind of using him as a human shield. I hope he doesn’t know that’s my intention.
    Jack clears the living room, and then moves onto the bedrooms. We follow, double checking all of them, moving on to the bathrooms, the laundry, and finally the kitchen. There’s no one here. They’ve left – in a hurry too by the look of it. Nearly everything is still here, an untrained eye would simply think they’re out for the day. Not us, we’re trained to notice things like the missing family photos.
    There’s no doubt that they’ve fled again, and I have to remind myself that smiling would be a really inappropriate thing to do right now.
     
    ***
     
    We spend the remainder of the afternoon and most of the evening asking around the neighbourhood about the Johns’ last known whereabouts and searching their house for any indication of where they might be headed. By the time Drew and I are back home in our shared