I extend my hearing further. Heartbeats. Breathing patterns. Two on patrol, footsteps moving in a lazy circuit. Four others stationary—sleeping or sitting idle.
And underneath all of it, somewhere in that compound, is Sloane.
If she’s still alive.
No. I can’t think like that. She’s alive. She has to be.
Kelt signals halt. We’re at the perimeter now. Through the trees, I can see the compound—rough structures, a generator shack, vehicles. And there, in the northwest corner, wooden slats covering a depression in the ground.
The pit.
That’s where she’s been for twelve days.
The wind shifts and there it is faint, so faint, buried under jungle rot and cigarette smoke and unwashed bodies and gun oil but unmistakable.
Her.
I don’t know how I know. I’ve never scented her in person. But something deep in my orc brain recognizes it, locks onto it like a beacon.
She’s alive.
Relief, rage and determination crash together in my chest. Every muscle in my body goes tight. She’s fifty meters away, underground, in the dark, and she’s been there for twelve days while her worthless fiancé declined involvement.
Kelt looks at me.
“Let’s go get her,” I breathe.
He signals the team forward.
We move.
Chapter Three
Sloane
Gunfire.
Definitely gunfire.
I scramble to my feet in the pit, heart pounding, ears straining. More shots crack through the night, closer now. Shouting in Spanish — panicked, not controlled. The guards are scrambling above, their footsteps pound across the wooden slats that have been my ceiling for twelve days.
What the hell is happening up there?
Rival cartel? Military raid? Police? Some kind of drug deal gone wrong?
More gunfire. An explosion — something just blew up. The wooden slats above me rattle with the force.
I press myself against the dirt wall of my pit, mind racing. This could be very bad. If it’s a rival cartel, I’d be trading one set of captors for worse ones. The Reyes cartel wanted me dead eventually, but at least they’d been taking their time and hadn’t raped me yet. A rival group might not be so patient.
The night guard abandoned his post. The man who actually checks on me, who’s more alert than the others, he’s gone.
I’ve been planning this escape for days. The rotted board and the footholds I carved into the wall. Tonight was always going to be the night. I just didn’t expect backup chaos.
My hands shake as I move to the corner of the pit where I’ve been working. The rotted board is directly above me. The footholds I spent two days carving into the wall are to my left. I’ve been obsessing over this escape route for forty-eight hours, running through it in my mind again and again.
Okay, Sloane. This is it. No more planning. Time to actually do this.
I move to the shallow footholds I carved into the dirt wall. They’re not terrific but better than nothing. I tested them yesterday and they held my weight. Of course, yesterday I wasn’t shaking with terror. And yesterday I was only testing whether I could climb only a short way up, not all the wayandpry boards loose at the same time.
