“Describe her body, the condition they found her in.”
Amelia stared into the lights that buzzed above. Silence stretched on where Richard didn’t speak. When he finally did, it was on a hoarse voice that sputtered a few disjointed recollections.
A heart ripped from her chest. Tongue from her mouth. Body rotted beyond recognition.
“You’re all pathetic,” Ivan told her and abandoned his ice pick for the folding knife in his pocket. “The screaming, the pleading, the promises you make.” He sliced through the binds at her wrists. “When there’s nothing left to do, you pray.”
Violent trembles wracked Amelia’s limbs as Ivan climbed on top of her. His weight crushed her chest and siphoned the air from her lungs. There’d be no floating away from a monster like him. Amelia tried to bite him, buck him off her, scream for help. The effort earned her only pain—in her shoulder, her head, her thighs where his fingers dug into the flesh and pried her legs apart.
“I’m the closest thing to God’s love you’ll ever know,” he told her as his dirty palm slid up the inside of her thigh.
“Please don’t! No!” she screamed, but that only delighted him more. He licked his lips and held the knife to her throat.
“Emory should’ve been here by now. I gave him plenty of time. Remember that when it all goes black. He left you for me. He left you.”
The knife blade grazed the inside of her thigh until the sharpened end menaced between her legs, threatening a horror no imagination but his could conjure. The metal door exploded open and slammed into the adjacent wall so hard the warped studs shook. Two Velasco men hurried through.
“You need to come quick,” one of them said, winded and with sweat dampening his temples.
Some foul mixture of disappointment and delight surfaced on Ivan’s face as he climbed off of her.
“Stay here and watch them,” he told one of the men.
Gunfire echoed inside the building as Ivan rushed from the room.
FORTY
EMORY
Atop a hill shrouded in darkness, the six Moriarty men evaluated the building below. They’d backtracked twenty minutes north then cut east down a dark country road. For all Emory knew, they’d driven into the abyss. A smattering of stars above—more than he had ever seen—begged to differ. Beauty like that didn’t exist in that diabolical void. Then again, what did he know about the abyss?
The metalworking factory sat forgotten at the end of a gravel road overgrown with brush. A fence ran the perimeter, but the “private property” signs weren’t enough to keep the vagrants and junkies out. Human-sized holes punctured the chain-link.
“Did we come this far just to stare at it?” Emory asked. “Let’s do the damn thing.”
They’d waited long enough and hadn’t drawn any attention that Emory could tell. The inaction could make him sick. Next to him, Jack’s silhouette itched and twitched for a cigarette. In nicotine-deprived annoyance, he voiced what the others surely thought.
“We don’t know the situation in there, their numbers, where they’re positioned. We can’t just go running in.”
Emory surveyed the building again and enumerated the ground they’d have to cover. Six men. Thousands of square feet.The doubts leeched into his blood and threatened to poison his resolve.
“There are two vehicles,” Pete said and pointed to the black SUVs parked near a loading dock. “It’s not a guarantee, but that should give some indication of relative numbers. No one has come or gone either. That’s a good sign.”
Liam moved down the line and slotted himself between Jack and Emory. “We’re not gonna know until we get inside.”
“What do you suggest?” Emory asked Corey. His battle-savvy paid dividends in these situations.
“We split up inside. Jack, Zulu, and Pete break left at our entry point. You, Liam, and I break right. We enter at the door by the loading dock.”
When the others nodded their assent, Liam turned to Emory.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked, his face half in shadows so the others couldn’t clock the subtext underscoring the question. Perhaps they hadn’t even considered it. Emory had.
Are you willing to die by his hand tonight?
Liam could never ask him directly, not even then, so he shrouded the question in ambiguity and hoped Emory understood. And he did; better than anyone, because long ago he accepted that facing Ivan meant facing death.
Emory gnawed his lip and glanced at the full moon riding high, smaller than it’d been an hour ago but brighter too.
