The Basement Wolf

Chapter 14. Static and Blueprints

The warehouse crouched like something left behind by a storm. Rust slicked the hinges of a roll-up door, and a wind-thrashed tarp flapped against concrete like a warning flag. Sandra slipped through a side entrance where the lock hung broken, her breath frosting faintly in the cold cavern inside.

Light bloomed upstairs—yellow string bulbs hung across a skeletal mezzanine. The glow framed Bradley’s silhouette, lean against a railing, his voice carrying low:

“Up here.”

She climbed the metal stairs, boots ringing soft against steel. At the top, the smell hit: coffee gone bitter and the dry tang of dust. A folding table sprawled beneath a dangling bulb, strewn with laptops, cords, and a rolled blueprint pinned flat with a wrench. Beside it stood a woman Sandra had never seen—a shape inked in shadows and silver light.

Half her head was shaved, stubble black against pale scalp; the other half fell in a sleek sheet to her jaw. Tattoos crawled up both forearms—fractals, birds, something like circuitry—and vanished into a threadbare denim jacket marked with stitched sigils of old bands. Her gaze, when it lifted, was metallic gray, flat and measuring.

“Andy,” Bradley said. “Sandra.”

Sandra nodded. Andy didn’t waste the gesture. “You’re the one walking into the lion’s chandelier party,” she said, voice a dry scrape. “Sit.”

Sandra sat. Bradley stayed standing, close enough that his shadow brushed her sleeve. She didn’t look at him. She looked at the woman who had turned a folding table into a command post.

Andy tapped a key. A projector hummed alive, throwing the mansion across a tarp tacked to concrete: white lines, blue shadows, red dots that pulsed like hearts.

“Home sweet hell,” Andy said. “Let’s start outside.”

The laser pointer jittered across the schematic. “Two junkyard domes west side—obsolete. I’ll loop their feeds with last month’s footage of raccoons. East eave—here’s your bastard. Brand-new PTZ with IR and a baby LTE uplink. I can’t kill it without flags big enough to read from Mars. I can, however, give you twelve-second blind spots if you beg nicely.”

“Twelve seconds,” Sandra repeated. It landed like a weight inside her ribs.

“Interior cameras, same story.” Andy flicked the pointer. “Foyer and gallery feed to an NVR that makes backups like a paranoid ex. I won’t touch those. But your kitchen hall?” The light danced over a thin corridor. “Blind for five meters. Whoever designed this trusted the help too much.”

Bradley’s voice cut smooth. “Catering entry?”

“East loading bay. QR scan. I salted the roster with your alias—Sonia Mendez. Code hits your phone at 1500 tomorrow.” Andy’s gray eyes narrowed. “Keep your head down, hair up. People see checklists, not faces.”

Sandra nodded once, memorizing every syllable like oxygen.

“Here’s your corridor,” Andy continued, rolling the projection tighter. “Pantry door needs two shoves. Behind it, a service spine. Two bends, then a lock that thinks it’s clever. Old hinge, though. Lift with a blade, you’ll feel it sigh.”

Sandra’s pulse thudded. Liam. That’s where you are. That’s where I rip the world open.

Andy bent, cracked open a slim case, and laid out hardware like bones: bone-conduction earpiece, matte-black ring with a raised nub, adhesive strips in sterile blister packs. “Comms. Earpiece rides your jaw under the net, ring’s your PTT. One press live, two for position ping, three if the sky’s falling. Don’t fat-finger.”

Sandra fitted the ring, cool metal hugging her thumb. It felt like a promise.

“Door pings,” Andy said, tapping the strips. “Plant under the lip—office, upstairs, wherever you need to know. They whisper if a door moves within fifteen feet. Whisper loud.”

“And exit?” Bradley asked, folding his arms like a question mark.

Andy’s mouth slanted. “Plan A: you ghost out the way you ghosted in. Plan B: trash run—hourly. Hug a bin like it owes you rent. Plan C: east hedge sprint when I sneeze the PTZ blind. That’s twelve seconds, sweetheart. Trip once, and you’re Christmas décor.”

Bradley’s grin flicked like a knife. “She won’t trip.”

“Save me the alpha routine,” Andy said. Then, casually, almost cruel: “Extraction’s the real trick. You can’t just walk him out.”

Sandra’s fingers stilled. “Then how?”

Andy jabbed the blueprint with the pointer. “Catering carts. Big stainless beasts on rubber casters. No one checks them once they’re stacked and draped. Hell, you could smuggle a Saint Bernard if you fold him right. Your boy’ll fit fine.”

Sandra’s stomach clenched. Liam, in the dark under a shroud of tablecloths. She forced steel into her spine. “And if he panics?”

Andy’s tone didn’t blink. “Then you keep him quiet.”

Sandra stared. “Explain.”

From her jacket pocket, Andy produced a tiny amber vial, thumb rolling it like a coin. “Chloroform. Old-school but tidy. Cotton pad, two breaths, dreamland. He won’t like it. You’ll hate it more. But it beats a scream that buys you a bullet.”

The room iced. Bradley broke it with a low growl. “Not unless—”

“Not unless everything else burns,” Andy said, tucking the vial back like a secret. “Your plan is clean and boring. This—” her palm brushed the case—“is insurance.”

Sandra’s voice, when it came, was glass. “Give me the insurance.”

Andy looked at her for a long, slow beat, then slid the vial across the table. It stopped against Sandra’s knuckles like a dare. She pocketed it without a word.

“Good,” Andy said softly. “You’re honest about your odds.”

Bradley’s jaw worked, silent friction. His hand drifted near Sandra’s elbow, heat radiating like a hazard sign. She stepped forward half an inch, enough to break orbit. Not him. Liam. Always Liam.

Andy snapped the laptops shut. The mansion vanished, leaving the tarp a square of gray nothing. For a moment, the dark swelled big enough to swallow thought.

“Questions?” she said.

Sandra asked them like lifelines. “Hair net or cap? Badge or fob first? What if QR glitches?”

“Net and cap, fob before badge, and if the code pukes, smile dumb and spill water on the scanner. I’ll rebroadcast from a new MAC.” Andy tilted her head. “Anything else?”

“Payment,” Sandra said.

Andy’s grin was small and sharp. “Half now, half after. Despite what lover boy here thinks, I’m not running a soup kitchen.”

Bradley rolled his eyes. “She calls me that because she’s jealous.”

“I call you that because you still think flirting is a tactic,” Andy said. Then, to Sandra, “Crypto, cash, or a bag I can count twice?”

Sandra didn’t blink. “Money’s never the problem.”

For the first time, Andy smiled like she meant it. “Then tomorrow, Sonia, you walk in slicing limes. And you roll out pushing a cart no one dares open.”

Sandra touched the ring, felt the vial like a brand in her pocket, and whispered the only promise that mattered: Next sunset, I bring him home.