“They’re not answering.” My voice trembled. One of them wouldn’t have been cause for concern. Two would have been strange. But all four of them? They wouldn’t have been unreachable without telling us something was going down.
“None of them?” Texas yanked his gaze from the complex and looked at the phone in my hand. I shook my head. He cursed low, snatching his laptop up and opening it with a snap. I looked over his shoulder, passing my attention back and forth between the building and what he was doing.
“Is that their phones?” I asked when he pulled up a map of the city and showed six blinking red dots. I assumed the two just outside the city were us since they were practically on top of each other. The four remaining dots, however, were inside the city. “They’re together,” I said.
“Yeah.” Texas zoomed in. “They’re at Bricker and Stein. All of them.”
“Even Knix?” I asked as a droplet of rain slapped the windshield.
He nodded. “Their phones are still on. Everything looks normal.”
“If their phones are on…” I gulped. “Why aren’t they answering?”
“I don’t know.” Texas closed the laptop and reached into the backseat as more raindrops hit the top of the car and the side windows, sliding down the glass and blurring the image of the street outside. My eyes widened when I saw him lift out a case that I hadn’t seen before. He opened it, revealing a small handgun.
“A gun? Are you even allowed to have gun in Australia?” I hissed.
“Marv got an import permit for it,” Texas said as he leaned forward and tucked it into the back of his waistband.
“What are you expecting to happen?” The pitch of my voice shot up as he shrugged into a jacket.
“Hopefully nothing,” he replied, “but I have to be prepared for everything.”
I shook my head as he handed me a spare jacket that looked like it belonged to one of the guys. “I don’t like this,” I said as I shrugged into the coat.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he said, his brows drawing low. “It could be dangerous, I’m not sure you should—”
“You’re deranged if you think I’m going to let you go in there alone,” I snapped. “Do you know how many people with guns end up getting that same gun turned on them. If there are two of us, we have better odds.”
“I think that’s for home invasions,” Texas said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, I probably won’t even need to use it.”
I reached for the door handle. “Let’s hurry up and figure out what Ollison knows,” I said. “The sooner we know, the sooner we can get to Bricker and Stein.”
Texas nodded and reached for his own door handle. Releasing the locks, the two of us dashed out into the rain.