Blood Brother Betrayed (Sexton Blood Brothers)

Chapter 1

Determined to Set Things Right

Willow woke to a pounding headache and feeling that she needed to get to a bathroom quickly. With a groan, she sat up, and immediately started retching. Vaguely aware that she was in an unfamiliar room, she leaned over and began to vomit.

From somewhere nearby, a voice asked, “Are you okay?”

Shaking her head, Willow couldn’t stop herself as she was sick for what felt like forever.

She felt like the room was spinning when the door was flung open, and a couple of big men dressed like orderlies entered. They didn’t say a word as they grabbed her by the arms and started hauling her toward the door. Her feet didn’t even reach the floor as they dragged her through the door. Willow saw a few people in hazmat suits enter the room as they pulled her out but she didn’t see what they were doing as the door slammed shut behind them.

Feeling unwell, Willow sagged in the men’s grasp, and soon, her feet were dragging on the floor. The jostling made her feel so much worse. When she threw up this time, it ended up getting on one of the men’s legs and shoes. He immediately let go of her. Too weak to hold herself up, Willow’s body sagged into the other man. At 5 foot 7, she wasn’t tiny, so when she put her weight on him, the man stumbled against the wall, dropping her as he did.

The man immediately regained his balance and strode angrily toward his companion and pushed him. As ill as she felt, Willow looked up and knew that they weren’t concerned about what might happen to her as the fight escalated. The other man pushed the first one back, which was quickly followed by one of them taking a swing at the other. Scurrying back before she ended up getting trampled, she allowed herself to fade just enough to pass through the wall nearby. It was an impossible escape and something that she had long been taught she shouldn’t do. Her family had told her that her abilities were something to be ashamed of, so she had always been careful not to show anyone else what she could do.

As she lost sight of the two men and emerged in another room, Willow let gravity drag her down. She lay her face on the cold floor, exhaustion overtaking her for a moment.

You can’t stay here, Willow. You have to get moving because at some point, they will start looking for you.

She put her hands on the floor and pushed, but her arms shook, and she almost crumpled to the floor.

You’ve dealt with worse than this. But if you don’t get moving, it’s probably going to get a lot worse.

This time, she managed to get on all fours, although it took a lot of her strength. Pushing against the floor, she ended up sitting with her knees bent and her legs under her. As she tried to catch her breath and gain some control over her muscles, Willow looked around the room.

She soon regretted that.

Strange implements and tools hung on the wall, and there were several drains near metallic gurneys. Then she began to notice a distinctly unpleasant smell. Her grey eyes took in the things around her, and Willow realized that escaping from the men had resulted in her finding a torture room.

That was all of the motivation she needed to get out. Standing would take too much effort, so she started to crawl toward the wall, heading back in the direction of the room where she had woken. When she reached the wall, Willow allowed herself to fade through it, then she continued to crawl across the floor. This time, she didn’t do much more than make sure the room was empty before she continued her slow trek across the cold floor. She had no desire to figure out what the rooms were for.

Someone was talking to me when I woke up. I need to get back to him and see if he knows what’s going on here.

Her mind was almost entirely focused when Willow felt the floor start to shake. She turned to look at the wall between her and the hall, and she could see shadows moving on the other side of the thin window. People were moving up and down the halls now. They must have realized she had disappeared. Thinking they would start trying to figure out where she had gone, Willow turned and moved perpendicular to the hallway and crawled away from it. After passing through a single wall, she once again lay down and rested. She knew that they would probably be looking in the rooms up and down that one hall because it was long. Logic would tell them that she was still close, probably in one of the rooms where she was dropped.

Willow dragged herself through over a dozen rooms before reaching another hallway. She was trying to get across it when her body simply didn’t have the strength to keep going, and she collapsed on the floor. Once again, she heard someone trying to talk to her, but the voice was too far away and her mind was too tired to try to make out what was being said.

When the floor started to vibrate, the young woman knew that she needed to get to a hiding place, but her body simply wouldn’t respond. Someone lifted her roughly off of the floor, and she was aware of arguing, but nothing made sense. They were taking her somewhere, but she had no idea where. They actually didn’t carry her too far before opening the door. She was placed on a flat surface, and then a pair of fingers touched her neck. Somewhere in her mind, Willow was aware they were taking her pulse, but she was too exhausted to react to someone touching somewhere that was vulnerable.

After a bit of poking and prodding, she realized they were taking her vitals, but they didn’t stick around too long. When they left, she felt herself drifting in and out of consciousness. During the periods when she was awake, Willow tried to piece together what had happened leading up to her arrival at the strange place. All she managed to remember was something about a prank and money.

“Hey, are you all right in there?” The low voice was warm and full of concern.

When she tried to look around her for the person speaking, Willow flinched at the bright light. Placing an arm over her face, she shielded her eyes from the cruel fluorescent lights. Slowly raising her arm away from her face, she opened an eye and started to look around the place. The room was cold and clinical. It was different from the torture room, but it was definitely not a place that was meant to be comfortable. She noted this while she kept looking for the person talking to her.

Her mouth felt dry when she tried to speak. Willow ran her tongue along the roof of her mouth a couple of times, then she tried to speak. Her voice was rough as she asked, “Where are you?”

“I’m in the room next to you.”

Frowning, Willow looked around her, but there were no bars or gaps that would make it so that someone could be heard. As far as she knew, the walls were solid – at least, that was her experience, as it had been draining to pass through them the way she had.

“Seriously,” she swallowed hard, trying to wet her mouth. “I can’t see you, and I know the walls are solid. So where are you?”

“I’m in the room next to yours. You aren’t actually hearing me talk because I’m…”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a loud banging noise. Willow immediately focused on the door because she recognized the sound from when the men had entered the room. There was no one there.

The sound of a struggle in the room next door made it clear that the people hadn’t come for her – they were there to take the man in the cell next to hers.

“What’s happening?” Her words were whispered, and she knew that they were drowned out by whatever was happening next door. She was too weak to shout, and even if she could, drawing attention to herself was not something she wanted to do. She leaned her head back, tilting her chin up to look at the wall. Unfortunately, her abilities allowed her to pass through solid inanimate objects, not see through them. Frustration began to build as there was some shouting.

It took a while, but eventually, she heard the struggle move out into the hallway, and the shouting was painful. Squeezing her eyes shut and covering her ears, Willow was reminded that she had a headache, and the noise was not helping. The man who had been talking to her was clearly a really good fighter because he was still causing them a lot of trouble and she almost missed the sound of the door slamming shut. But they were still stronger than him, and the noise began to lessen as the people hauled him away. Willow turned and looked at the wall, wanting to help the man to escape the way she had. She didn’t want to imagine what they were planning for him.

This is your fault, Willow. All of this is your fault because you did not tell them no. Instead, you took the money and went through with it.

Memories began to trickle back to her, but Willow wasn’t ready to face them yet. It was starting to sink in that Nolan was there somewhere, trapped because she had been foolish enough to fall for something that was obviously a trap. Instead of going down the well-worn path of self-deprecation and criticism, Willow sidelined the thoughts to focus on how to get out of the situation.

Of course, she could probably literally walk out of the place on her own if she could find the exterior wall and the ground floor – she figured that the place was more than one floor. What she didn’t know was if they were above ground or below it. She couldn’t just walk out of the place if they were several floors up because the drop would probably kill her. And she couldn’t walk through solid earth, meaning she couldn’t just pass through the outer wall without knowing where she was. A map of the facility was necessary to plan her escape.

More importantly, though, she knew that she was not the only one to get dragged into the place. The people who had paid her were after Nolan, and she remembered that they had injected him with something. A light groan escaped her as she worried that they may have just killed him.

No, that doesn’t make sense. Why would they inject him and abduct you? His family has far more power and wealth, so he would make a much better mark for a ransom. What doesn’t make sense is why they took me at all.

She gritted her teeth. They probably don’t know that I’ve been disowned. Oh, so foolish. They were able to get two rich kids at one time because I was an easy win. They aren’t going to leave me alive when my parents refuse to pay.

The thought of her parents caring actually drew a hoarse laugh from her. Thinking of that pair as her parents was laughable now, and the idea that her life might rely on them paying for her ransom made her feel a moment of hopelessness.

I’m not trapped here. I don’t need their money to escape this, and I sure as hell don’t need them to care about me to survive. They said I wouldn’t last a year on my own, but I did.

That train of thought died as she realized that the only reason she had hope for the future was because strangers had promised her so much money. It would have been enough to move somewhere new and start over. Instead, they had taken her, too, and now they had some kind of plan for her.

She briefly considered that they may have seen her use her abilities. The problem with that was that they had grabbed her before she had done anything freakish. Before she had blasted a car into the road, they couldn’t have known she wasn’t normal.

Ah, I'm at a loose end, aren’t I? There’s a record of them paying me that first time. They deposited $10,000 directly into my account, and that would have created a trail. Unless ... they want to take their money back. They must know that I closed that account, so the only way to get their money back is by taking me, too. A weak smile tugged at the corners of her lips. They must have been furious when they realized that I closed that account, so they couldn’t take back the money.

It was a bright spot in an otherwise horrible situation.

She covered her eyes with her arm and let her mind go back to the events before her abduction. She replayed the events at the café like a film, and shame washed over her as she remembered how she had planted the bug and the way Nolan had apologized and insisted on making things right. She remembered how she had fled, ending in them being trapped in an alley. She recalled the screams and cries of the people on the street and feared that her actions may have caused the death of innocent people.

“No, no, no. I have to fix this. I have to find Nolan, and then I have to find the other people trapped in this place and get all of them out. I can at least do that to try to make up for what I’ve done. I’m going to make this right. And then I’m going to get out of here and finally start a new life where I don’t have to worry about the past.”

She had no idea how she was going to do that because she had no idea how bad things were. What she did know was that she wasn’t going to stop until she was successful. She had failed too many times in her twenty-four years of life. Now was the time to prove that she wasn’t just a screw-up, that she could set a goal, and then not stop until the task was actually done.

With her mind made up to undo the damage she had done, Willow drifted off to sleep. It wasn’t exactly a peaceful sleep, but at least she didn’t have the usual nagging feeling that she was making things worse or doing everything wrong.

Instead, the prisoner felt that she had a goal and a purpose. Whatever happened, she wasn’t going to fail this time.