Free Committed by Sidney Bristol Page B

conversation ceased. The aroma of coffee and sweat mixed together in the humid evening air. It was the scent of a bust.
    The silence was tense as they made their way in the blackness of night, without the guidance of headlights, to the spot where the meeting would go down. He only hoped the location wasn’t shifted twenty feet in either direction. They were running a risk, but the culvert was the only cover.
    The van eased to a stop and Damien stepped out. Behind him, the rest of the men were just as careful.
    The fresh breeze wafted toward him, carrying with it the scent of flowers and growing green things. He paused and inhaled, catching the faint smell of fresh-cut grass.
    Once Damien’s eyes had adjusted to the moonlight as much as they were going to, he moved toward the other team. Their vans headed back to the staging area, nearly two miles away.
    “Moana?” one of the DEA officers called, peering at him.
    “Yup. Archer and I are trading places.” The two of them couldn’t be more different. Where Damien was tall and wide, Archer was average height and built like a swimmer.
    Damien took a few moments to familiarize himself with the area. He walked back and forth on the dirt-and-gravel road, trying to figure out why The Money Man would pick this spot. Their meets were typically remote, but this one took the cake.
    The land rolled away from them, the fields gone fallow. Trees formed a line bordering the plots. Their spot was in the middle of a floodplain, so no crops grew here, just grass.
    Not a cloud dotted the sky, just an expanse of stars Damien rarely glimpsed in the city, and the moon. The full, glowing sphere was a bad omen in his experience. Weird things happened during a full moon that he could never explain. Guns backfiring. A stun gun going dead. New equipment breaking.
    Damien wasn’t a superstitious type, but he’d stayed alive by being careful.
    Tonight, he’d be ready for anything.
    Damien stood hunched over in a culvert barely five feet in depth. Which was pretty deep, unless you were six foot four. The SWAT team stood by, in helmets, night-vision devices, and flak jackets, equipped with shields, guns, and ammo strapped to their bodies. He was working with the best team possible.
    “One pair of headlights approaching the location,” said a voice coming from his receiver.
    That one sentence amped up the tension. A few officers, who’d taken a knee, now rose into a crouching position. Two other vehicles were still to arrive, but with even one nearing their location, it was a little more real.
    Sweet tendrils of anticipation amped on adrenaline curled through his body.
    He could picture the scene in his mind’s eye.
    The location was remote, but from either direction, you had to approach it on a one-lane road that ran under a canopy of trees. If Damien were a crook, he’d pause to survey the landscape before driving out into the open, the way their bad guys were doing.
    All of the officers had been very careful to not leave any trace of their passing, right down to carrying a broom to wipe away tracks and footprints. By now, the staging area would beon lights-out, and the officers silent. The unmistakable sound of an engine neared their position and went right by. He tracked the vehicle’s progress with his eyes, estimating that it must have stopped on the south end of the little bridge. The idling engine serenaded them.
    “Suspect car one is south of your position. No movement inside yet,” their lookouts radioed in.
    There wasn’t a sound, not a cough, sneeze, or boot scuffing the ground. Nothing.
    “Two vehicles have turned onto the road from the highway. ETA, five minutes. The north team is moving into position behind them.”
    Damien’s culvert team would wait for his signal once they were cleared. He knew the whole operation would go down in a flash.
    He sucked down a calming breath and a pair of green eyes came to mind.
    Rapunzel.
    Engines rumbled through the night.
    “Two vehicles