While I held my own with Bellamy, I can’t anymore. Fear is screaming through my body, and I’m convinced I’m dying. Logic doesn’t live here anymore, and I can’t pull myself back from the mindless panic.
That fickle spark inside of me begins to flicker, and I begin to lose my grasp on it. Every time I’m allowed to breath in a gasp before Avery shoves me back down causes me to let go of it a little more. Snot is coming out of my nose, tears are streaming down my cheeks, and Bell can’t carry a tune to save his life or mine.
There’s no distractions, no help coming for me, the future is a black hole as deep as my blindness.
Maybe they’ll hold me down for too long and I’ll just die. There’s no God, hope, or help coming.
Maybe death…is the answer.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
ANSEL
It’s beenfive days since my sun and moons have been taken. Pack Alston managed to help us get the equipment needed to find the underground door into the compound, and while we have found evidence that it exists underground, we haven’t found the entrance.
We can’t blow our way in without possibly having the fucker collapse in on itself and killing Cassidy, Bellamy, or Winter. That’s an unacceptable option, so we continue to hold onto the tendril of patience none of us have.
I’ve been kicked off the property because I was frustrating Abbott. I kept wanting to go further out with the equipment, and Abbott told me there’s no way the doorway is further out than a mile from the main gate.
He also told me that the owner of this property doesn’t own anything outside of two miles, but I still think he’s wrong. Just because the umbrella corporation doesn’t own the land past the parameters set, doesn’t mean he’d ever know what’s been built underground.
I got in a fist fight with him over it, and now I’m in time out at Pack Mayor’s house with Shiloh as he trolls the dark web for information.
My eye is swollen, my ribs hurt because Abbott’s punches are the equivalent of an anvil hitting your body, and I’m not any closer to finding our people.
Everything is taking too goddamned long!
“Breathe, Ansel. You’re turning purple,” Silas murmurs, placing a glass of sweet tea beside me on a table.
Do I want tea? No. Will I drink it because it’s sweet enough to hurt my teeth and it’s polite?
Fuck yes I will. Southern hospitality is ingrained in my blood, even though most of it might now be made of sugar at this point after the last few hours of being here.
Taking a breath to appease Silas, I take a sip of tea as well. It’s exactly as sweet as I thought it would be, since I’ve been drinking my weight in sweet tea since my stomach is too tangled in knots to eat anything.
Swallowing hard, I shake my head.
“I feel fucking useless,” I sigh.
“All of our allies are chasing down leads in the city for word or trace of Clara or any of her men. The homeless hear things, and we are willing to listen to what they have to say. We are also looking into Jake as well, miserable son of a bitch that he is,” Lyle mutters next to me. “We found out yesterday that his mother is no longer living in the senior home that she’s been in. The woman has dementia. There’s no way she left on her own steam.”
I need to talk about what we know, and I think everyone in this room knows that. The list of things that we don’t know are long enough to strangle us all with the unknowns.
“Think he got her out, or someone else did?” Shiloh asks, working at his usual spot in the den. “My money is that Clara did it. We wouldn’t stoop to hurting his mother. We aren’t animals.”
The ‘unlike Clara’part is unspoken, but I hear it loud and clear.
“Jake has been with us long enough to know that,” I grunt. “I bet she’s threatening him. Regardless, he made the wrong fucking decision. We would have helped him. What are you working on?”
His eyes flick to me before he nods, understanding that I need to talk shit out so I don’t go even more stir crazy.
“There are some areas that are encrypted on the dark web, and without a password, breaking in entails careful manipulation of its failsafes,” he begins. “I don’t want to push too hard and get caught, and also I can’t use any of my typical tools to do it for me. So instead, I’m working on it in spurts so that I won’t get too impatient and fuck it up.”
“Understandable.”
“The reason I’m looking at this particular chat room is because I saw a passing poster of an auction announcement happening this week. There are no known auction houses that I know of, as we don’t allow them to exist,” Shiloh continues.
