I knew better now. I had learned.
So why did my heart still race when he said my name?
I parked my Honda on a street with more potholes than pavement. The building in front of me was abandoned, or pretending to be—windows boarded up, graffiti covering the walls, the kind of place where things happened that never made it into official reports.
I got out of the car.
The inside was worse than the outside. Water damage on the walls. Debris covering the floor. The smell of mold and something chemical that made my eyes water and my throat burn.
I followed the hallway to the room my source had specified. Third door on the left. Knocked twice, paused, knocked three times more.
The door opened.
The man on the other side was not my source.
He was tall and broad, with a shaved head and a scar that ran from his eyebrow to his jaw. His eyes were flat and cold, the eyes of someone who had done terrible things and felt nothing about them.
Behind him, two more men emerged from the shadows, their postures tense, tattoos crawling up their necks.
“You the reporter?” the first man asked. His voice was like gravel.
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “I’m looking for Razor. He said he’d meet me here.”
Razor couldn’t make it.” The man smiled, and it was the worst smile I’d ever seen. “But he told us all about you. Little reporter girl, asking questions. Digging into things that don’t concern you.”
I took a step backward. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“No misunderstanding.” He moved toward me, and the other two followed, spreading out to block my escape routes. “You’ve been making problems for some very important people. They wanted us to explain why that needs to stop.”
My mind raced through options. The hallway behind me. The door at the end. The window I had passed, boarded up but maybe loose enough to break through.
None of them were good. None of them would work fast enough.
“I’m just doing my job,” I said, still backing up. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Should have thought about that before you started asking questions.”
He lunged.
I turned to run, but the hallway was too narrow and I was too slow. One of the other men had circled around, appearing in front of me like a nightmare, and then hands were grabbing me—rough, bruising, yanking me backward. I opened my mouth to scream but a palm clamped over my lips before any sound could escape.
Panic flooded my system—pure, animal panic, the kind that bypasses thought and goes straight to instinct. I struggled, kicked, tried to bite the hand covering my mouth. The grip only tightened. Someone laughed—a low, ugly sound that turned my blood to ice.
“Feisty,” the scarred man said. “I like that.”
His hand tightened on my arm, fingers digging into flesh, and I could smell cigarettes and something sour on his breath as he leaned closer.
The other two men were circling now, closing in, and I could see in their eyes exactly what they were planning and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Please, I thought.Please, someone?—
And then I heard it.
Sirens. Distant at first, then closer, the wail of them cutting through the night like a knife. The men froze. Exchanged glances. The scarred one’s grip loosened just slightly, his attention splitting between me and the sound growing louder outside.
“The hell, she brought the cops—” one of them started.
The door exploded inward.
