“Got it,” Rena huffs from the back corner near the shelving unit.
She holds it up to me, so I take it, verifying that we have what we need.
“This is it. This is what they want,” I mumble at the same time my eyes snag on two heart-palpitating concerns. “These stars, the black one … it saysyouthbeside it. What the fuck?”
“Move out,” Gage barks. “We can study it later.”
“Hold up,” I insist because there is no need for further scrutiny. My mind has already pieced this fucking puzzle together. So, I pass the file back to Rena and turn my attention to the other enraging concern—the slight tilt to the bookshelf, like the one side isn’t flush with the wall. “There’s something behind here.”
“Fuck me, Tytan,” Liam growls. “We will send a team back in there. You have what we came for. Get the fuck out.”
Disregarding him and all the shouting over the comms that follows, I start yanking at the shelf. It’s a false door that someoneshut in a hurry, but didn’t ensure it was latched. Something caught in it, which is hindering the mechanism, but I finally wrench it open, shining my light inside.
And my stomach bottoms out as Rena gasps, “Oh my God.”
Rage swarms through me as I stare at a long passageway, fringed with cells and girls inside them. Six young girls of various shapes and sizes. Healthy, but all of them frightened, hollow, and disassociated. Staring at us as if we’re here to pick them.
“Someone’s trying to get in the office,” Rena says, drawing me back to the fact that we’re on borrowed time, so I tromp to the first cell and examine the lock.
“Hey there,” I whisper to the trembling brunette. Her big brown eyes are glued to me but completely checked out, and her body is curled into a fetal ball. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m gonna take you somewhere safe.”
“Get out, Ty. We’ll come back,” Liam demands again, a touch of fear threading through his tone that only arrives when he thinks our situation is dire. Makes sense. This is the kind of intel you kill over. We’ve undoubtedly stepped on a land mine.
“I’ll personally go back in with you and pull every one of them out,” Gage tacks on. “You have my word. Let’s complete our task first, man.”
Our task. The clock is ticking for us to deliver the information. Stealing files and a rescue mission is a lot to pull off with the amount of prep we were afforded, but I can’t fucking walk out on them. I won’t. It could be too late.
My wife says that for me as she uses the butt of her pistol to bang on the lock of another cell. “Don’t waste your breath on telling him to leave them behind when we all know that’s not happening. Get a fucking route for all of us instead.”
Unfortunately, in the next singular heartbeat—similar to the one between choices made and endeavors abandoned, innocence preserved and purity stolen, exuberant life and vacant eyes—theoffice door bursts open, and I dash past Rena to face a security team storming toward the file room.
Five men. Angry. Armed.
Two who would dwarf Gage.
Crunch. Squeak. Blood.
No goddamn hesitation.
As Rena darts toward the threshold, I raise my pistol on them, shove her backward into the hidden cell room, and slam the shelf closed to the tune of her shrieks and pleas and the cussing rants of the men who are like brothers.
And in that follow-up heartbeat, I do what I’m trained to do, what I’m grateful to be able to do. I fight. I protect.
Aim. Shoot. Crack.
One wrong move.
I’m hit.
RENA
When freedom lies in the tethering, being released is a prison.
“Ty!” I yelp his name from the depths of my lungs, a screech I hardly recognize, as he slams the false door, flush with the wall, and I lunge toward it.
My palm hits the flat surface, banging and begging for deliverance. For him.
And the cracking sound of blazing bullets penetrates the barrier, but I’m trapped.
