Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66697 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66697 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Carrie nodded. “Good. Then be the man who made her that promise.”
I worked my jaw. Let the hate settle. Then I straightened my shoulders and gave the orders, voice clear and cold as anything Seth Miles ever taught me. “I have my head in the game, Carrie. I swear to you, much as I’m enjoying seeing these bastards fall, I’m doing this for the right reasons. Yes, I’m leaving a bloody trail, but it’s necessary.” I looked out over the gathering crowd. “Nobody takes Tessa from her family. Anyone between us and that girl goes down, hard. Denton dies. Rainman dies. Every buyer, every collector, every witness. We end it tonight. And we bring her home. Then the violence ends.”
My men all grunted in assent. Kass loaded a new mag. Finch racked his slide. Hawk squared to my left, a solid wall. Darby, her expression more than a little wild, gritted her teeth and shouldered up behind Carrie, like she’d fight beside me if I let her inside that place.
Carrie held my gaze just a second longer before stepping aside. She wiped her bloody hand on her jeans in a slow, steady drag. “OK. I see you, Antonio.” She gave me a steady look. “Let’s do this.”
I led the charge forward. The monster didn’t die or even go back inside its lair. It locked on a target. Denton had less than an hour to live. Then I was sending the bastard straight to hell.
Chapter Fifteen
Tessa
The floor was cold under my cheek before anything else came back to me. Then the scent of cedar, a sickly sweet, organic scent that nearly turned my stomach. My shoulder throbbed where some bastard had wrenched it. Then the room itself slid into focus and I whimpered. Amber light along the baseboards. The walnut paneling. The one-way glass set into the far wall at eye level. I’d stood on the other side of that glass with a small army at my back ten weeks ago. Now I was on the wrong side of it, wrists zip-tied behind me, cheek against industrial tile that smelled of bleach under the cedar.
I didn’t move yet, trying to keep my expression blank and vacant while taking stock of my body. My wrists were tied, but in front of me, the plastic biting sharply. Both my legs were free and I could wiggle my toes. I thought one knee might be scraped from the way it stung through my jeans. Small stinging bites ran over my skin on one cheek, my forearms, and one shoulder. My other shoulder hurt like a motherfucker.
Then the only inventory that actually mattered. I pressed my bound hands flat as I could get them against my stomach, fingers splayed, and held my breath and waited for some kind of answer my body couldn’t actually give me. Nothing hurt low. No cramping, no wetness, nothing wrong that I could feel.
I was back in the fucking intake room. Denton had stood in the doorway the first time they’d shoved me through it, that voice describing me to somebody on a phone like I was horseflesh. I turned my head and found the source of a small, steady scraping sound.
A woman knelt at the table leg, her wrists zip-tied same as mine, working the plastic against a burr in the metal edge with small, patient movements. When she looked at me, her eyes were flat and assessing, judging me the same way I judged her. The trick was to figure out if we could trust each other or if the other woman was a plant to get you to fuck up.
“Two doors,” she said, barely above a breath. “Main hall and the service corridor. Guard rotation runs every six minutes, then every four after dark. It’s after dark.” Her jaw tightened. “You’re new.”
“Not exactly.” I worked my own wrists against the tile, testing the give. “I’ve been here before.”
She snorted, looking away. “Everybody’s been here before.”
“How long you been back in this building?"
"Three days. They move us around. Warehouse, a house downtown, back here for tonight." Her jaw tightened. "Big night tonight. Apparently, there are buyers coming in person or something.” She kept working the tie. “I’m Mercy,” she said.
“M-Mercy Raines?” The name landed in my chest like a fist. Mercy Raines. The name I’d carried around for ten weeks like a stone in my shoe, the reason I couldn’t look at Casey or Grace without also seeing the woman we hadn’t found. Here she was, alive, kneeling on a bleached floor already having planned her escape.
“You know me?”
“You’re the reason we were coming back.” I know it sounded lame, but I was stunned to have found her by accident.
She tilted her head. “Why?”
“Because you matter,” I said, still stunned. I was rapidly reaching a saturation point and I knew I’d crash soon. “My sister’s man tore this city apart looking for you. We found three other women in the raid, but not you. I’ve thought about you every day since.”