Page 126 of Torment Me Knot
We follow Ronan to the rest of the team. There's maybe twenty of them standing solid in the dark. Aubrey moves with me, his shoulder at mine. None of them are looking at us. None of them are looking at each other. They're looking at the job. All these people. All of them here for her.
Ronan steps to two males I don't know, big and dark-jacketed. They’re familiar to him. His pack. I drift close enough to catch his words.Perimeter. Trapdoor. Sub-level.
I shift to see the building beyond the corner we're hiding behind. The building is nothing. It's a falling-down industrial wreck at the edge of a block that time forgot, all broken windowsand chain-link and weeds pushing up through cracked concrete. I've thought about what the outside might look like. I thought it would be more visible. Like the horror would show through the walls. It doesn't. It's just a building. Rotting quietly while the city in the background gets on with its business.
Sera has been inside it for two days and it looks like nothing. It looks like somewhere you'd walk past without slowing down. It doesn't seem possible that something this terrible fits inside a building that ordinary.
“We go in on my signal,” Ronan says, pulling everyone's attention back. He regards Aubrey and me. “You two stay behind us until we're inside. After that you don't move unless I say so.”
I nod. I'm not arguing with that. I want to find Sera, not get shot trying.
The team streams out in a silent black ribbon to the fence. The sound of it is small and sharp in the silence and then the SWAT team moves and we move with them and the cold hits me full in the face as we cross the open ground between the fence and the building. No cover out here except my alphas surrounding Aubrey and me. Just cracked concrete and dead weeds and twenty people in black moving without a sound, and I focus on Kev's back directly ahead of me and put one foot in front of the other and don't look at the windows.
We head to a broken door, the team streaming silently through, and then Kev's hand is at my back and we're moving inside.
The smell hits before my vision adjusts. Damp concrete. Dust. Abandonment. Every sound sharpens. The scuff of boots on the floor. Cold presses in from the walls. The flashlight beams cut through the dark ahead of us and the SWAT team moves through them, dark forms with rifles up, spreading out through the corridor.
I don't look at the dark between the flashlight beams. I look at the next patch of lit floor and put my foot on it and move to the one after that.
The deeper we go, the worse the smell gets. It slips beneath the damp air, chemical enough to sting with every breath.
I know this scent. I know exactly what lives inside it.
Suffering.
Aubrey’s grip crushes tighter around my hand. I squeeze back just as hard and keep moving.
The far end of the corridor comes into view. The door to the storeroom is ahead. The SWAT team is already moving toward it, spreading out, and I'm tracking the man two steps ahead of Kev when he stops. Weight back. Rifle up.
A huge shape steps out of the dark, bulk sitting wrong on the frame. The male moves faster than he should, and then the corridor explodes.Modified beta.
A crack so loud my whole skull rings and my vision whites at the edges. Then Kev's hand is on my arm, wrenching, and I'm moving backwards into Ezra's chest. Lex's voice somewhere to the left. Then Aubrey is pressed against my side. I'm shoved against a wall. I drag Aubrey to the ground with me.
Shots ricochet off the concrete walls. I can’t tell how close they are anymore. Gunpowder chokes the corridor alongside the sharp copper-chemical stink of modified betas, and I bury myself against Aubrey’s shoulder.
The shots stop and the silence rings. Three bodies on the ground. Two SWAT officers down too. Not dead. One of them is moving, the other swearing steadily into the concrete floor.
“Clear,” someone calls. Then again, further down. “Clear.”
Kev's hands go to my shoulders first, then my face, turning it toward him, checking. He checks Aubrey the same. Aubrey holds still through all of it, chin up. When he's done, the locked muscle in his jaw releases by one degree. “You're not hurt,” he says.
“We're fine,” I say, but we're not even close.
Kev nods anyway. We'll all relive this later. But no time now.
My gaze slides to a still body lying face up. I know his face. He's one of the guards who loved throwing me into my cell after Wallace's treatment knowing I'd be too weak to stand. My mouth fills with saliva. I swallow it down and hold still and make myself look at him.
He's also still breathing despite the flow of blood running from his temple.
“He's alive,” I say. “He… was one of Wallace's guards. And he… he…” I can't finish.
Rage moves through Kev's scent, the oakwood going sharp and burnt, there and gone before he locks it down. “Ronan.” He doesn't raise his voice. Ronan appears from further up the corridor. “I want that one for questioning. Alive.”
“Understood.” Ronan gestures to a team member who cuffs his wrists and ankles. The male won't be going anywhere.
Lex and Ezra help us off the floor. I can't remember walking to the modified beta but I'm here. Lava pours through me when I think about his sadistic smile. The hungry glint in his eyes. I'm wearing heavy boots and I drive my boot into his side once. Twice. Three times. He's unconscious so he doesn't move. I want him to suffer the way I suffered. He was there. He saw what Wallace did and liked it. I lift my foot, ready to smash it into his face when Kev grips my bicep.
“I thought you wanted him alive,” he says.
