Both ran impassive looks over me, up and down, before one of them nodded to Spence. He gestured behind him. “Inside.”
Spence continued to shove me in front of him.
I saw my friends.
For a split second, I’d hoped all of this had been a ruse to get just me. That my friends were actually fine, probably eating breakfast somewhere together.
My stomach dropped.
None of it had been a ruse.
Against the far well was a row of jail cells, and inside one was Palma, Marshall, and Heath. Levi had his own next to them.
Palma was pale, tears streaking down her face. Marshall was bruised up. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and his mouth was bloodied. Heath was similar. All three had their hands zip-tied behind them. There was tape over their mouths and around their heads.
My gaze went to Levi last and winced at seeing the state he was in.
He didn’t have the same tape around his mouth and head. And he wasn’t handcuffed or zip-tied, but it didn’t look like it was needed. His jaw was physically hanging enough to the side so I knew it’d been broken. His face was one giant black and blue bruise with blood caked all over him. Both of his eyes were swollen shut. He was unconscious.
His shirt was half torn off of him with more blood seeping through. He’d been thoroughly beaten to a bloody pulp. I started to go to him, my heart tearing out of me, but Spence jerked me to him. His hands dug in even harder. “I don’t think so.”
The door slammed shut behind us. The two men came up behind us at the same time another door opened from the other end of the warehouse.
Four more men stepped inside, looking similar to the two guys behind us. Business suits. Guns in hands. Mafia soldiers. But behind them were another two men, and those two, I knew.
Tristian West and Ashton Walden had arrived.
Chapter Forty-Two
Creighton
I was in Nightclub 3 when my phone rang.
Lassiter was also just walking into my office. I showed him my screen, and he gave a nod. He came inside, but shut the door and remained quiet as I accepted the call.
“Gus.” The lead in my IT department. “What’s up?”
“Uh.”
Lassiter and I shared a look.
Gus was never uncertain. Eating. Excited. Nervous. Never hesitant.
“Gus,” I said again, more assertive. “What’s wrong?”
“Okay.” He let out some air and plunged ahead, sounding out of breath. “We might—I mean, you—you might have a problem. You told me to corrupt the AI drone program, right?”
“Right,” I said, dryly.
“Well, I was working on it last night. Or early this morning, depending on your definition—”
“Gus, get to the point,” Lassiter snapped.
He was quiet, which didn’t last. “Lassie? You’re there? Awesome. That’ll help, but okay, yeah. Getting to the point. So, anyways,like I said, I was working on the program, and I intercepted some communication about the program. I didn’t want to miss anything, so I wrote a program to automatically scan for anything relating to it. I got an alert around four this morning. The communication itself was earlier between the guy in charge of the whole thing and another person. It took a little bit to identify the other person because he had all sorts of IP addresses to hide his identity, but I found him. The conversation was mostly asking questions about the program, what territories it’ll patrol. Things like that.”
“Gus!” I barked.
“Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Right. Okay. The other person was Spence Calloway.”
