“Jenna,” Darla hisses. “Sit down.”
“No.” I set my sights back on the man before us. He’s not superhuman. He’s no God. Why should he get to dictate our lives like this? “Give us water.”
Mila’s eyes grow impossibly wide. Kathy bites her bottom lip so hard blood blooms at the seam with her teeth.
The man steps forward, stale smoke wafting over me with the movement. “How about you shut the fuck up?” He raises a hand and his thick fingers slide around my throat, squeezing. It’s no use—I grip his wrist tight, but the man’s immovable. Solid. The weight eases off the soles of my feet, toes of my sneakers scraping the dirty concrete as he walks me backward. Everything swims around me, darkening when I lose focus, my sense of up or down going hazy as I register my center of balance tilting to the left.This asshole sure has a problem with women. Maybe Mommy didn’t love him enough.Spots mar my vision before he tosses me to the side, legs failing as I crash down.
Hard.
“Don’t ever think you have the right to look me in the eye like we’re equals again,” the asshole sneers before retreating from the room, the door slamming shut in his wake.
Joke’s on him.
I never assumed to be his equal.
I know I’m better.
FOUR
FANG
The dirtand dust that coats the outside of the windows makes it near fucking impossible to peek inside, but seeing as there isn’t a single light on or sign of central heat when I press my hand to the glass, I’d say nobody’s home.
“You think they’re laying low, waiting to merc us when we ain’t looking?” Darko cups his hands to the pane beside mine and squints at the interior of the old house.
“Dunno,” I drawl. “But I’m positive that’s a great way to make a fucking target out of your head.”
He pulls back, grin wide.
The kid’s green. Our youngest officer at the table. But he’s smart and a problem solver. Just not when it comes to keeping his head in one piece, it seems.
“No lock.” He stares at the cellar door behind me. “I was fucking sure this was the right address, but it doesn’t give me vibes that there’s anyone here.”
Darko spent days tracking down the communication lines, piecing together the clues to arrive at the facts we used to create our strategy. The texts from the jailers indicated they’d be offsitefor a while, but we never considered the possibility that the location was wrong.
I cast my eye across the fields, to the properties beyond. If we’re just one number out, close but no cigar, we risk giving away our intent before we’ve made any fucking progress. I don’t want to admit it, but Darko could be right. Chaos and Jinx went left when we arrived to scout the garage several feet from the house, and I haven’t heard any commotion from their side yet.
“Look, I’d hate for us to be wrong about the place, but I guess that’s a good thing if there isn’t anyone here,” I appease. “Maybe it means they don’t hold women in Temperance like we’ve been led to believe.” Although I could argue it’s also a bad thing considering we’d be back to square one, trying to figure out where the Devil’s Breeddohave the women.
There’s no doubting they moved the ‘stock’ as they call them by van through our territory, unnoticed until someone pointed out the fucking patched riders following five minutes behind.Stupid fucks.Too proud and too ignorant to think about taking off the patch for one fucking day to blend in. They’d rather get high off the fear their name invokes than do the job right. But it was the word of a man who couldn’t be trusted that said they were held here.
It was the whole fucking reason Chaos shot the Devil’s Breed member.
Darko grabs one of the hinged timber cellar doors and lifts it open, dropping it to the side with a crack of wood on dirt. He repeats the action with the other and then tilts his head.
“What?”
He lifts a hand to shush me. “Listening.”
I stand beside him and stare down the stairs at the dusty floor and yellowed cardboard boxes visible to one side. “Hear anything?”
“Thought I did.” He shrugs. “But maybe I imagined it.” Gun drawn, he starts down the stairs.
I glance to the right and note the bars over the small ground-level window. Not unusual—most people have them for security. But it tickles the ridges of my brain as I follow Darko underneath the house.
He holsters his weapon and nods toward a crude door centered on a roughly built partition wall to the right of the staircase.
The barred window makes further indentations in my gray matter.Maybe we weren’t wrong.Again, there’s no lock. Just a heavy-duty slide bolt that makes it hard for anyone to break out unless they trained in fucking Tae Kwon Do or some shit. It screams arrogance, the kind of attitude that assumes nobody would dare step foot down here other than them. I step up to the door and lift my hand to the bolt, then pause, leaning forward to hover my ear close to the timber.Breathing?Is that someone hyperventilating on the other side?
