Page 135 of The Ashes of Summer

Eventually she looks over at me. "You good with that?"

"No."

Her eyebrow lifts. "No?"

"No part of me is ever going to be comfortable sending somebody Summer loves to knock on a trafficker's front door."

The joking stops. Nobody says anything at all.

Then Constance smiles, and it's a real one this time. "Good answer."

I roll my eyes, then nod. "Don't make me regret it."

The plan comes together fast after that. Constance approaches the front entrance alone while the rest of us stay out of sight. The second somebody opens that door, we move—fast enough that they can't organize, fast enough that they can't move the women, fast enough that nobody in there understands what's happening until it's already finished.

Simple in theory. Violent in practice.

Usually the best kind.

I slide a fresh magazine into my weapon and listen to the click of it seating. Around me everyone runs their final checks. Weapons. Routes. Positions. Nobody's talking much now, because what we're about to do has settled over all of us.

My eyes drift to Summer.

She's watching the warehouse. Silent. Set.

And Christ, I wish I could leave her behind. I wish I could put her somewhere locked and safe and handle this myself. But that version of her doesn't exist anymore—Jackson took a hammer to it the second he put her on that helicopter—and what's standing beside me now is a woman preparing to walk back into the worst place she's ever been because she knows what's waiting inside for the ones who can't leave.

It fills me with pride and terror in equal measure.

Dangerous combination. The kind that gets people killed.

"Ready?" Black asks quietly.

I look at the warehouse one last time. At the lights. At the monsters waiting inside it.

Then I chamber a round.

"Let's go."

Chapter 41

Do We Save Her?

Jacob

The closer we get to the warehouse, the quieter everything becomes.

No jokes. No conversation. Even Constance stops running her mouth. The only sounds are boots crunching over gravel and the distant hum of the security lights strung above the freight yard.

My shoulder throbs with every step. The pain's settled into something constant now—not piercing enough to stop me moving, not dull enough to ignore. Just a steady reminder that I lost more blood tonight than a man's supposed to and that Tamara’s somewhere having an aneurysm imagining me standing here.

I don't care. There are women inside that building and I promised Summer I would get them out. Everything else waits.

Constance reaches the entrance first.

The metal door looks like a hundred others I've stood in front of over the years. Rusted. Industrial. Forgettable. It's amazing how evil always hides itself inside ordinary things.

She knocks three times, and the sound carries across the whole freight yard.