My attention drops to the zip ties. I brace myself, then slide closer to Hailey’s hands.
“Let me see,” I murmur.
Hailey hesitates like she expects a trick. Then she inches her wrists forward. I hook a fingernail under the tie and try to create space, even a sliver I can work with.
There’s nothing. It sits flush to her skin.
Fucking hell.
I force my breathing to steady and drag my gaze around the room, trying to make my brain cooperate.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I can’t loosen these with my nails, so I need something. A sharp edge. A piece of metal. Something broken.”
“Nothing breaks in here,” Hailey murmurs.
I swallow, then drag my fingertips along the floor where it meets the wall.
I’m expecting rubber. Cheap matting. Grit.
Anything.
Instead my nails scrape over cold, unforgiving texture. It’s hard as steel and grainy like sandpaper that’s been painted over. My stomach drops.
I press harder, searching for the seam. There should be a seam. There’salwaysa seam.
But nope.
Not in this tin can.
The floor is one continuous plate, and where it meets the wall the corners curve smoothly, rounded like a bathtub.
I sit back on my heels.
“Told you,” Hailey says.
Uh-uh. Kind of wish she didn’t.
Above us, a grid of metal bars has been welded between the roof’s support beams. The whole place is basically a cage, hidden under cheap fabric lining that’s been stapled in place. There’s no light inside except a slanted slice of daylight cutting through the small rear window.
My mind flashes back to that conversation I had with Nathaniel. He told me nobody knows everything going into a kill, and that same truth has come back to bite me in the ass. Why the hell did we never even wonder what was inside the car? Like it never crossed our collective minds that one of us might actually end up trapped in it.
All we ever talked about, all we ever schemed for, was how to catch it. Get it to open. Leave with the girls alive and the murderers captured.
But fuck. It doesn’t even matter now, does it?
Cassian’s shot. I shot him. Nathaniel’s unconscious. Talon… is Talon tailing us? He was still in the car when everything went down. Also, wait. I slashed the van’s tire. Cassian said it can’t go too far before it breaks through the rim, or something like that.
I swallow hard and tell my heart to calm down. Chances are my guys are going to save us. I believe they will. In the meantime, I need to figure out what I can do on my end.
Besides the creepy ceiling, the bathtub walls, and that seamless floor, there are storage compartments in here. They’re not the regular kind. They sit recessed into the side panels, and each one has a padlock welded through the latch. Every hinge is on the inside of the compartment, not the outside.
You can’t unscrew what you can’t reach.
What about my baton? Do I still have it on me?
I pat down my thighs, then my hips, then the inside of my jacket, searching by instinct even though I already know what I’ll find. The place where the baton should have been is empty, a hollow gap that makes my stomach lurch harder than the road ever could.
That bastard took it.
