We rolled out, black windbreakers and city hats, every inch of us ghosts. The drive was short, silent. Parker tracked the feeds on her phone, murmuring updates as we neared the target.
At the warehouse, the air was sharp with the stench of evil. Big Papa idled the van a block out, ready to run if we called. Wrecker and I circled the perimeter, clocking the guards: three at the front, one smoking at the dock, another two pacing the side gate with a bored slouch.
The French team moved silent as the dead, checking in a larger grid.
Chapter 25
Harper
Ilost count after the first ten wolves.
Not that I could see them all. The cell was a square shipping crate bolted to the warehouse floor, with chain-link fencing welded over the front and sides, and a caged bulb that cast a sickly yellow cone over everything. I could smell them. When stressed, wolves reeked of canine and testosterone, and here it came in waves, cut with the chemical rot of old blood and diesel. My face burned where Brie’s claws had raked me, but the real pain was inside: every time I blinked, I saw the look she’d given me on the bridge, the raw mix of terror and betrayal, as ifIwas the monster.
When I came to, I was in this cage, but not alone. There were other women in here besides Brie and me. One blonde so pale she looked bleached, the other darker, battered around the eyes. They hadn’t said a word since we had been tossed in here and sat huddled together on a mat, knees drawn tight, arms locked in a death grip. Brie was at the farthest corner, facing the wall, her boots leaving a trail of black smudges on the filthy floor.
I pressed a sleeve against the blood still seeping from my cheek. “Well, this is a damn mess,” I said, but no one replied.
The warehouse was the kind built for trucks, not people: exposed girders, a ceiling high enough to swallow sound, and somewhere up there, was a square of window with the dawn leaking through. They’d turned off the heat, but the place ran warm from wolf body mass and the stink of nerves. I could see through the cell’s welded chain-link “bars” to the perimeter: too many wolves to count, all in black jeans and hoodies, shuffling in formation like they’d practiced for a parade. Most ignored us, but one or two made a point of pacing past the crate every few minutes, eyes sliding over the bars. The way they watched, I could tell they were more afraid of their boss than anything we could do.
I took stock of the exits, just as Jess had taught me. Double doors at the front, a single steel panel at the back, maybe a rolling garage door at the far end. The walls were thin, with no insulation, and I could hear the low thrum of traffic on the street outside. I could also hear the wolves muttering to each other, some in what sounded like Polish or Russian; I couldn’t tell which.
I ran a hand over my arms to stop the shivering. My jacket was gone; I wore only the thin cotton top from before, spattered now with dried blood. I checked for my phone or anything useful, but the wolves had stripped us clean. I had to count on Jess’s relentless skills to find me.
Brie hadn’t moved, not even to wipe the blood from under her nails. Her hair was shorter than I remembered; the inverted bob gave her an edgy look. She hugged her knees, head pressed into the crook of her elbow. Every so often, she’d flinch when the wolves barked a command, but mostly she just breathed, slow and shaky.
I slid to her side of the cell. “You want to talk about it?”
She shook her head without turning.
“Because we’re probably not going anywhere soon, and I hate the awkward silence.”
She said nothing.
The two women on the mat didn’t react, but the dark-haired one finally lifted her head. Her nose looked broken, and she had the bruised, faraway gaze of someone who’d seen the inside of a lot of these cages. Her stare was clinical, almost bored. The blonde just stared at her own knees, rocking.
Brie’s voice was a splinter. “You shouldn’t have come.”
I felt my jaw clench. “It was either come or let you wind up in a crate on a cargo ship to Taiwan. I couldn’t let that happen.”
She let out a hollow laugh. “You don’t get it. You never did. You think you’re so much better than us—”
“Us? You’re all in with these people now?”
She spun on me, her eyes swollen with tears and rage. “Luc loves me. He—he said he’d take me away from all of this. From Mom, from everything.”
I glanced at the other girls, then back at Brie. “Yeah, Luc really seems like the prince type. Is that why he sells women out of shipping containers? Real stand-up guy, Brie. Maybe Dad would have liked him.”
She lunged at me, hands clawed, but I caught her wrists. She was smaller than me, but she fought like a cornered animal. “You don’t know anything! You never did! You just left us, and then you act like you’re the only one who ever got hurt—”
“I left because I had no choice!” My own voice echoed too loud, and one of the guards banged the cell with a length of pipe. “Quiet!” he barked, the accent pure Jersey.
I lowered my voice. “You think I wanted to end up in a club, dancing for freaks like Steiner? You think I wouldn’t have killed to trade places with you and finish school, be with mymate?”
Brie’s face crumpled. “Luc said you liked it. He said you made all this up to keep me from being happy.”
I looked at the other women, saw the way the pale one shrank into herself at the sound of his name. “Brie, he’s a trafficker. They all are. That’s the only thing they do. I don’t even know if the real Luc exists.”
She just shook her head, the tears running unchecked now. “I loved him,” she said. “I thought he’d save me.”
