Page 137 of The Ashes of Summer

Her pain.

They know exactly what she is.

One of them.

And for the first time since we came through that door, something like hope starts moving through this building.

Then another gunshot tears across the warehouse from somewhere above us. The sound ricochets off the metal walls and half the women scream and duck. One of them throws herself over the girl with the blanket, covering her with her own body like she's expecting rounds to come through the ceiling.

Everything in me locks.

Upstairs.

The knot that's been sitting under my ribs since we pulled into that yard pulls tight, because Summer told me Vince never left this place. That he's been running it since the night they took her. And something underneath all the noise in my head knows he's still up there.

A shout follows the gunshot. Then another—muffled by concrete and distance, but the urgency comes through fine.

Somebody's running.

I'm moving before I've consciously decided to, and pain explodes through my shoulder hard enough that the world tips sideways. My vision blurs badly enough that I have to catch one of the support beams to stay upright, sweat breaking across my forehead while the next wave rolls through my chest.

Fuck.

Not now. Not tonight.

By the time it clears, Black's already at the staircase with one of his men behind him, weapon up. And somewhere above us Constance's voice rings out across the whole building.

"Get back here, you little cunt!"

A door slams hard enough to shake the upper level.

Vince.

I push off the beam and force my legs to work. Every step hurts. Every movement drags at stitches that should be healing in a hospital bed. I don't care. The only thing that matters is getting up there before the bastard finds a way out.

The upper level is exactly what Summer described, and it's worse than I'd built in my head. The corridor is lined with dressing stations. Vanity mirrors ringed with bright bulbs. Makeup palettes open across the countertops, brushes laid out in neat rows. Hair products. Cheap perfume. Racks of clothing shoved up against the walls—the kind of clothing nobody chooses for herself.

And every station is set up. Ready. Somebody works up here.

That's what turns my stomach. Not the neglect. The care. Somebody sits in these chairs and takes their time, and when they've finished, a woman downstairs stops looking like a person and starts looking like a product.

Somebody tried to disguise a slaughterhouse as a dressing room.

A young woman stumbles out of one of the rooms ahead of us—barefoot, mascara down both cheeks, oversized clothes hanging off a frame that's lost too much weight. When she sees us, she flinches so hard she nearly goes down.

"It's okay," Black says. "We're here to help."

She points down the corridor with a shaking hand. "He went that way."

Then she starts crying. Not quietly. The kind of crying that comes out of somebody whose body has finally worked out the danger might actually be over.

I don't stop moving.

Another gunshot goes off somewhere ahead. Then Constance swears—loudly, viciously, the kind of swearing that tells me somebody is about to have a very bad night.

I round the corner and everything clicks into place.

Vince is at the far end of the corridor with a handgun clenched in his fist. Sweat's darkened the collar of his shirt and his chest is heaving. Whatever mask the man has worn all these years has finally cracked clean down the middle, and what's underneath it isn't untouchable at all.