Page 150 of No Good Fight

Josh looks at me when we reach them with a carefully blank expression.

Only the same promise he gave me at the house.

We’re bringing her home.

Casey points toward the open door and speaks low enough that the rain nearly takes the words. “No smell of smoke yet. Power’s on somewhere inside. I can hear a fan or old blower running, but I can’t tell whether it’s building equipment or something he brought in.”

Logan shifts closer to the wall and listens.

Carter checks the rear line.

Remy reaches for the radio clipped beneath his jacket but doesn’t transmit yet.

For one strange second, all six of us are standing in the rain outside an abandoned maintenance building, cops and firefighters and men who have spent too much of their lives running toward other people’s worst days, and not one of them has asked me whether I’m sure I want to do this.

They already know.

Casey eases the utility door wider.

Darkness waits on the other side.

Somewhere inside that building is an eighty-year-old woman who tried to protect Alex with a cane.

Somewhere inside is the man who has spent years teaching Alex that everyone who loves her will eventually pay for it.

And somewhere inside is the woman who left me a trail because she believed the best I would be able to do tonight was find her body and make sure her killer answered for it.

Remy’s hand closes briefly around the back of my shoulder before he lets go and moves into position.

I look into the darkness where Alex disappeared and follow them inside.

32

ALEX

I hear the cough while Preston is gone.

At first, I think it came from me. My throat still feels scraped raw from the fire, and whatever he used to knock me out has left everything thick and slow enough that I don’t trust what I hear anymore. I stop twisting my left wrist beneath the restraint and hold still, listening past the faint mechanical hum somewhere deeper in the building.

The sound comes again.

A cough, followed by something scraping across concrete.

My heart starts beating harder.

“Mrs. Vance?”

I keep my voice low because I have no idea where Preston went or how far away he is. Nothing answers for several seconds, and I’m already telling myself I imagined it when a muffled voice comes through the wall behind me.

“Alexandra?”

Every breath leaves me at once.

I close my eyes and nearly laugh from the relief of hearing her voice, but the sound catches somewhere painful in my chest instead.

Preston lied. Mrs. Vance is alive, close enough that I can hear her through the wall, which means coming here wasn’t completely pointless yet.

“I’m here,” I whisper, working my wrist again. “Are you hurt?”