The kind of place where no one asks questions and everyone looks the other way.
The kind of place where children are moved like cargo, sold like merchandise, destroyed before they ever have a chance to live.
I think about what Ted told us, about what he admitted before we made him pay.
The things he did to those kids.
The things all of them do.
My hands tighten on the handlebars.
Not tonight.
Tonight, these kids go home.
And the men who took them go to hell.
We kill the engines a quarter mile out.
Coast the last stretch in silence, the bikes rolling to a stop in the shadows of the tree line.
The motel emerges from the darkness like a rotting tooth—single story, maybe fifteen rooms, half the neon sign burned out.
The kind of place that looks abandoned even when it's not.
The kind of place nightmares are made of.
The parking lot is scattered with vehicles.
A white cargo van.
Two sedans.
A pickup truck.
My jaw tightens.
That van is probably how they transport the kids.
Probably has bars on the inside.
Probably smells like fear and piss and desperation.
Probably heard screams that no one else ever will.
We dismount in the tree line, gather around Fenrir.
His face is carved from granite in the moonlight.
"Eight to ten guys, according to the intel," he says quietly. "Kids are probably in one of the back rooms—easier to contain, harder for anyone passing by to hear them cry."
No one flinches at the word.
We all know what we're walking into.
We all know what these men do.
We all know they deserve everything that's coming.
