“Tell me where she is.I’ll do anything for her,” Delphi begs.
“Come with me.You’ll take her place.She’s tainted with his spawn now.”He nods toward me.
His words stop me.She might still be pregnant.
“You never loved my sister.”Delphi challenges him.“If you did, you wouldn’t want to replace her with me.Now tell me where she is, or I’ll let these men kill you.”
“If I die, you’ll never find her.She’s already in the ground,” he says cryptically, and my blood runs thick and heavy through my veins.
Delphi turns toward the door, ready to walk out.
“Don’t leave,” he begs, but she steps out the door, closing it with a finality that leaves no doubt he’s dead.
Hades walks to the table across the room and picks up a pair of pliers.“Here, let me help you with those teeth.”He punches the asshole in the face, knocking him out before he yanks out a few teeth.Then we wake him up with a bucket of water.
“I’ll never tell,” he slurs, and we start working him over.
Hades uses pain on him instead of his usual mind control.When we get to water boarding, Winslow urinates himself several times.I have to step out of the room for fresh air.
“Did he tell you?”Delphi asks, taking one look at me covered in blood.
I shake my head.“He keeps giving us weird hints.”
“I got it,” Titan says from the speaker phone.
He rattles off an address, and we head to the location.
“Stay right there, Delphi.I didn’t want you to come, but Cronus gave in to you.Stay there, or I’ll handcuff you.”Hades threatens her, and she nods from her seat in the SUV.He turns to Totten.“Make sure she stays, or I’ll spend an hour with you in the box,” Hades says.
“Got it.”
The Unknowns moves as a unit, surrounding the old farmhouse.Titan discovered that in the time we thought Winslow had given up, he was here preparing.He’s only touched the surface of what Winslow did, but he found this property owned by a family member.
I stand back, even though I’m geared up to go in with them if necessary.They call clear on the empty house, and I stomp up the porch stairs, worried we followed a false lead again.There have been so many of them so far.
The house is empty except for construction equipment.I pass a ladder in the living room, where paint buckets and empty cement bags are.The guys are all walking around the house.I go upstairs, looking in the bedrooms, when Poseidon’s deep voice comes through the comms link.
“Hey, there’s something weird in the basement.It’s not up to the same dimensions as the rest of the house.It’s like a room was added, but there’s no door.”
I start searching closets, looking for an attic.Winslow said she was in the dark and cold.
“I got monitors,” Aries says, and I run down to his location on the main floor.
There, sitting on the floor, are three monitors.The screens are dark, but you can see that they are filming something.A bed appears on one, with a small figure lying in the middle.I start looking around to see where the monitors are connected.
“I got something,” Cronus says, and I run for him.
He’s looking into a closet in the hall.There’s a steel panel on the floor, bolted shut with a large padlock.
“Bolt cutters won’t work on that.”
“Wait,” Poseidon says, then starts pacing the floor.
He counts, then disappears down the stairs into the basement.He comes back upstairs moments later.“That’s into the area cut off in the basement.”
“He sealed her in a room?”Aries asks, and we all look at him.“I saw it on a mystery police procedural show once.”
“Get a torch.We aren’t going to be able to get through that lock.”
