Metal rattles softly as the stale air spills out from inside the warehouse.
The smell overwhelms me.
Sweat, blood, bleach, and rotting mildew.
I bite down the nausea threatening just behind my teeth.
Dim industrial lights glow, casting long shadows across concrete floors, stacked pallets, and towering shelves.
Every inch of this place feels tainted, like horror has been engraved right into the walls.
Tyler ducks under the partially opened door first, sweeping the interior meticulously before motioning me in.
I slip inside after him, rainwater drips from my sleeve onto the concrete floor.
Then Tyler slowly lowers the bay door, not shutting it fully behind us.
The storm disappears for the most part.
All I can hear is our ragged breathing.
Then my eyes adjust and I see them.
Women staring back at us from inside the cages.
Somewhere further inside the warehouse, faint music is playing through speakers.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tyler takes out his phone from his vest as soon as we are inside. The light from the screen highlights his sculpted jawline while he types fast.
I know he is texting the rescue crew and letting them know they can come inside now. Every minute counts if we are going to get them out of here alive. After the text is sent, he puts his phone back in the pocket on his vest.
The warehouse sprawls endlessly before us in artificial lighting while murky shapes crowd the corners of the room. Rainwater drips from our clothes onto the concrete floor creating patches of water while low distorted music hums, making goosebumps form down my arms.
Then one of the girls makes a weak sound. I almost miss it from the storm clattering the warehouse roof. A torn little cry comes from the nearest cage, feeble and frightened, cleaving my attention to her. She can’t be older than twenty. Bruises mark her ribs and wrist, and the emptiness in her eyes tell me that this is something that will reduce her to a shell of who she once was. Her body is drawn into the corner of the cage, desperate to take up as little space as possible, quaking helplessly as I near the bars.
Her entire body recoils.
“No,” she rasps out agitatedly, scrambling backward. “Please don’t!”
“It’s done.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean for it to. “We’re getting you out.”
The look she gives me is filled with pure heartbroken disbelief, as if hope is something too dangerous to hold onto anymore.
Of course she doesn’t believe me, not in a place like this.
I take stock of the tremendous warehouse again.
The steel wire tool cages, each enclosed with the same wired ceiling, line both sides of the warehouse like animal kennels, towering nearly ten feet high. Most are empty with only three occupied.
Fury courses through me like electricity searching for the next cable.
Tyler plants himself next to me with urgency, squatting near the cage as he maneuvers the bolt cutters from the duffel bag, the metal glinting in the harsh warehouse lights.
“We don’t have long,” he informs me with a steadiness I don’t feel like I possess.
Every inch of this place feels diseased. Bleach overpowers my nose. Even the cages look contaminated, the depravity has suffused into the steel so deeply, that nothing that encounters this place will ever come out clean again, no matter how much bleach they use.
