If this guy were in my mafia—and thank whatever entity in the sky he wasn’t—I’d have his ass beaten for his lazy security. He was practically screaming for someone to break in and fuck him up… Someone like me. I was able to pop the lock in a matter ofseconds with my lockpick kit, and as quietly as I could manage, pulled the chain out of one handle to slowly open the right door leading down under the house. It was pitch black down there.
I relied on a light touch against the wall to steady myself, the greenish hue of my night vision giving a general idea that the room was empty, keeping my ears sharp for any sign someone was down here with me. It wasn’t until the sixth step down that a shuffling sound caught my attention. Like something shifting against a rough surface, or someone’s shoes scuffing against the floor. I pressed my back to the wall on my right in an attempt to blend into the darkness.
Waiting.
Sniff, sniff.
Thatwasn’t an accidental sound.
Someone sniffled in the dark, then sighed heavily. “It will be okay,” a woman’s soft voice came from the darkness. “We’ll find a way out. I promise.” The assurance was low and a little shaky. And it definitely didn’t sound like Frank or one of his goons.
I took a chance. “Hello?” I called low, trying not to startle whoever was down here. The effort was wasted; someone gave a small shriek before being shushed by someone else, the sound muffled a second later, like a mouth was covered. My foot stepped down again as I turned the small light back on. “I’m not armed”—technically, not including the tire iron sticking out of my backpack—“are you injured?”
Another beat of silence. “Y-yes.” I think the first woman answered. “We are… hurt. There’s me and a young girl in here. Please,” the longer the woman spoke, the more frantic she sounded. “Please, get us out! Or at least take Laura! Do you have a rope or something to help pull her out?”
“Pull her out of where?” I whispered. As soon as I asked, I figured I wouldn’t like the answer. “Hang on, I’ll help you.” Finally, I found the bottom step to the basement floor, stoppingagain to listen over the growing whimpers of the girl and low murmurs trying to quiet her. My stomach lurched as more context became apparent.
Bare walls. A concrete floor that can be easily washed off. The faint, coppery scent of blood lingering in the stagnant air, mingled with body odor and mold. At least two women—one of them young—asking to be saved. Frank was gonna have a lot to fucking answer for when I got my hands on him.
Creeping toward the center of the room, stopping with every couple of steps to wait and listen for any sign I’d been caught, until the edge of a hole came into my field of vision. A very deep, very dark hole.
“Oh, fuck no.” The words left my twisted lips in a snarl, made even more monstrous with the voice modulator, and made the girl cry even harder.
Two pairs of eyes peered up at me from the bottom of that hole, hardly wider than five feet across and easily ten feet deep, their grimy faces a ghostly green color as they looked up in terror at what they couldn’t see. A dark-haired woman clung to a girl who couldn’t have been older than fourteen, brushing her tangled blonde hair and swaying in an attempt to comfort her. They didn’t look anything alike.
Frank had two people, one of them a child, in a fucking hole in this fucking basement. And it looked like they’d been in here for a while, judging by the absolute filth surrounding them and the state of their ragged clothes. There was a single bucket with the most horrid, stomach-churning stench of shit and piss, and just two almost-empty bottles of water in there with them.
My backpack thudded on the ground hard as I shrugged it from my shoulders, bending down to dig out a small light, a long length of rope, some beef jerky, and a large thermos of water. “Hang on, I’m throwing a rope down and a light.” Unwinding the rope, I glance around to find something to anchor it with. Aboutfive steps closer to the center of the room, I could faintly see something that looked like a support beam holding the ceiling up. “Are you too hurt to try climbing out?”
When I stepped closer to the beam to loop the rope around and tie off, my boot kicked something that jangled like metal. I didn’t want to look at what it was, unless I was ready to throw myself headfirst into a rage. But I made my head turn slowly, dropping my chin to find the heavy links of a chain coiled in a pile on the floor by the metal support. A chain that was locked with another padlock to the pole.
Frank was a fucking dead man.
With jerky movements and fury that threatened to light my blood on fire, I yanked the rope to check its hold and brought the rest of it to the hole’s edge. I clipped the LED light to the end of the rope so they could see it and lowered it down until it was hanging in front of the woman. “Can you tie this around the girl’s chest, under her arms? It won’t be comfy, but if you can help lift her from the bottom while I pull her up, we can get her out faster. Then I’ll throw the rope back down for you. Keep the light, hook it onto your shirt or something.”
She answered immediately, “Okay.” Then, “Laura, can you hold on to the rope so we can get you out? That’s right, good girl. Okay, I’m going to lift, and she will pull, there you go.”
The rope slackened a bit, and I hurried back to the pole. I stepped around it to use as a counterpoint to pull my weight against and tighten the rope’s tension. Fortunately, my gloves were thick enough to prevent rope burn against the rough fibers. “Ready when you are,” I kept my voice just low enough for them to hear, the modulator on the mask keeping my words clear in the crushing gloom. “On three.”
We counted together, and I pulled the rope with one large step back at an angle to the beam. It was a slow and tenuous process, but after about seven good pulls, a small hand finally claspedonto the edge of the hole, followed by another. The nails were chipped and bleeding, open wounds oozing onto the concrete as she put pressure on them to drag herself the rest of the way out. With the rope drawn taut, I went sideways to offer my hand to her. “Grab on,” I encouraged. “Almost there, you got it.”
Laura peeked up through the scraggly pieces of hair hanging over her face, hesitating for only a second before reaching out to wrap her fingers around my wrist and lock us together. It was hardly anything to pull her bony body up until both feet were steady on the floor. The broken sob that came from her cracked lips as she stumbled into my arms was a bullet straight to my heart. Her arms wrapped around me, and her body shook with her crying. It felt so natural to return her hug as my hand brushed lightly over the back of her head. She didn’t seem bothered by the fact that my face was covered, so grateful she buried her face in my chest, even with the rough tactical gear covering it.
“You’re gonna be fine,” I assured her. “Here, take this.” It took a minute to pry her off, holding her with gentle hands by her elbows, and guide her over to sit on the floor by the jerky I’d laid out since she likely couldn’t see them. I put them in her hands, which immediately wrapped around the food. “Eat one of those jerky strips and sip some water slowly, so you don’t get sick. And I’ll take this,” I reached behind her to pull the knot of the rope loose. “And get your friend out. Try not to make any noise, okay?”
I hadn’t been on the property long, but I pulled the sleeve up on my left arm to check the time on the simple black sports watch. It had been eleven minutes since I broke in. We didn’t have much time before even an idiot like Frank found out his guard was dead. Stepping close to the hole’s edge, I let the end of the rope down again. “Can you pull yourself up? I need to make a call.”
“Yes,” the woman responded and took the rope. Soft scuffling followed shortly, and the slack pulled tight as she began her slow climb. As she came closer to the edge, the light’s soft glow lit the walls, showing deep scratches like someone had tried clawing their way out. Someone with actual claws, like a shifter. After a moment, making sure she wouldn’t fall, I stepped back and pressed the button on my earpiece to call the pre-programmed number.
“Yo,” Taylor’s voice was chipper. “Wassup, sis?”
“Come to Frank’s house. Bring backup and cleaning shit.”
There was a beat of hesitation before he exploded. “You’re shitting me. You went afterFrank?”
“He has girls in his basement.” My lips barely moved with how tightly my jaw clenched. I watched with a cautious eye as the woman finally pulled herself over the ledge, looking just as worse for wear as the girl, Laura. With a silent jerk of my head, I gestured to one of the other pieces of jerky, and she nodded. The light barely reached where I stood, arms folded as I watched over the two captives and fumed.
The brief silence on the line was tense. “Sex workers?” he asked.
