Chapter 18
Lydia's voice came through the earpiece at ten forty-seven.
“Angie’s target is driving up. It’s confirmed, we’re at the right building.” The satisfaction in Lydia’s voice was palpable.
“Dumbass never noticed me,” Angie said through their comm system.
“Well I should hope not, otherwise we would have to fire you,” Rylie said.
“Are you taking care of him?” Sophia asked.
“Well, I’m sure as hell not going to let him go into the building and let him join ranks with whatever assholes are in there. But first he’s going to answer a couple of questions.”
Sophia saw a Honda Pilot drive up to the building.
Angie, in a crappy Toyota Miata, that was thirty years old if it was a day, pulled up around the corner.
The guy, who was approximately six feet tall, which put him six inches taller than Angie, got out of his car and headed straight for the door. He didn’t even look around.
Angie yelled out to him, and he turned around. Sophia could see her smile from where she was stationed in the parking structure across the street. It was clear that Angie was flirting, but it wasn’t working. The man was getting irritated.
She sidled up close to him, and then he leaned in and got in her face. Sophia knew that was exactly the in she’d been looking for. What happened next took approximately four seconds.
Angie's hand came up between them, not in a defensive gesture, something faster and more deliberate than that.
He pushed forward and that momentum worked against him in a way he clearly hadn't anticipated.
Sophia watched him fold. It wasn't dramatic or loud.
One moment he was in Angie's face and the next he was going down and Angie was controlling the descent with both hands, lowering him against the side of his own car with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this before and found it unremarkable.
She crouched over him. Sophia couldn't hear what she was saying but she knew what she was doing. The man’s face shifted from fury to cooperation as her fingers jammed into his neck.
He talked. It wasn't long. Maybe forty-five seconds.
Then Angie did something else that Sophia couldn't see and the man stopped talking. He stopped moving, then stopped being a problem.
Angie got zip-ties out, and made quick work of tying him up, then she stood up, smoothed her jacket and keyed her mic.
“He's down. He said there are two men inside. Three rooms. Bree’s locked in one of them. Apparently he’s the cleaner.”
Cleaner. They were going to kill Bree.
“Is he going to wake up?” Lydia asked.
“Not for a while,” Angie answered. “I have more questions for him.”
She and Rylie had watched everything from the gap between two support pillars of the parking garage.
The warehouse district at this hour was not empty but it was close.
A truck had rumbled past ten or twenty minutes ago.
Before that, nothing. The building Lydia had identified was a single-story commercial unit at the end of a short access road, its loading bay doors closed and padlocked on the outside, windows blacked out, signage stripped down to bare metal brackets.
A nothing building. The kind of building you drove past without seeing.
Sophia heard sea lions.
“Now,” Rylie commanded.
Sophia and Rylie ran flat out, no tactical elegance to it, just two women in vests crossing an empty street at speed.
They reached the side of the building. Angie was at the door, the lock already handled. She had her hand on the door.
Rylie stacked behind her, Sophia behind Rylie.
Rylie keyed her mic. “Lydia. Last check.”
“Two mobile, center and right. The third signature hasn't moved.” A pause. “Go.”
Angie counted down with her fingers. Three. Two. One.
She went through the door.
What happened in the next two minutes seemed to happen in fragments.
The space was larger than it looked from outside. It was a long open room with a concrete floor and harsh work lights. Someone shot out the lights, probably Angie. Before that happened, for just a second, Sophia had seen a man.
There was another shot of gunfire. It was so loud, louder than she would have ever expected.
She stayed where Rylie had put her, near the door, covering the angle she had been assigned.
She wasn’t supposed to move. She was supposed to make sure nobody left, but where was Bree? She needed to find Bree.
She heard Angie on her right.
She heard Rylie ahead of her.
Then she heard a man shout something in a language she didn't know, and then he stopped shouting.
Then there was one shot. Very close to her left. She turned.
When her eyes were acclimated, she saw a man lying on the ground. He looked dead.
Rylie was near a wall, standing over another man. He was rolling around and groaning, holding his leg.
“Found the door,” Angie said.
Sophia ran.
The far left corner of the warehouse was separated from the main floor by an office door. There was a padlock on it. It was flimsy, but effective. Angie kicked at it with her combat boot. Kicked at it again. It gave. She shoved the door open.
The room beyond was small and dark and smelled of concrete and bleach and fast food containers stacked in the corner. A cot with a blanket. A bucket.
Bree was in the far corner, on the floor, her knees pulled to her chest, her eyes already fixed on the door. She had heard everything. She was braced for whatever came through next.
When the light from the main floor hit Sophia's face, Bree made a sound like something breaking open.
“It's me,” Sophia said immediately. She crossed the room in four steps and got down on her knees in front of her. “It's Kayla’s mom. Bree. You're okay, honey. You're okay.”
“What about the men?” Her voice was a whisper.
“They can’t hurt you,” Sophia whispered back.
Bree stared at her. In the shadows Sophia could see her face, pale, hollow-eyed, a bruise along her left jaw that made something cold move through Sophia's chest, and then Bree launched herself at Sophia, hugging her neck so tight, Sophia thought she might choke.
“I've got you.” Sophia managed to whisper.
“My mom?”
“Your mom is safe. She’s been so brave. She’s going to see you real soon.” She kept talking because Bree needed sound, needed a voice she recognized, needed to know this was real and not another version of the dark.
Bree continued to shudder.
“We need to leave,” Angie said as she put a hand on Sophia’s shoulder.
“Bree, you did so good, Bree. Sending that text. You were so smart. Can you walk?” Sophia asked into her hair.
“Yes.” Her voice was wrecked from crying and from days of near silence. “Yes. I can walk.”
“Then we're going to walk right now. Keep your eyes on me. Okay?”
Bree pulled back and looked at her and nodded. She got her feet under her and her knees buckled once and Sophia caught her and held until she found them again.
“Okay,” Bree said. “I'm okay.”
“I know you are.” Sophia kept her arm firmly around her. “Let's go.”
Rylie was still where she'd been.
The third man was still on the floor, his hand still pressed against his leg, the blood spreading dark across the concrete.
His breathing had gone shallow and his face was gray but his eyes were open and tracking.
Rylie crouched in front of him with her forearms on her knees, patient, unhurried, the way you waited for something you knew was coming.
Sophia steered Bree toward Angie without stopping.
She heard Rylie ask something. Low and even. She heard the man say nothing.
Rylie asked again.
Silence.
Angie took Bree from her at the door, wrapping her in the space blanket she'd produced from somewhere and speaking to her in the low, steady voice she used when Nora was frightened.
She walked her out into fresh air and Sophia heard Bree take one long shuddering breath when the cool air hit her face.
Sophia looked back.
Rylie asked a third time. Her voice had not changed at all.
The man said something. One sentence. His accent was thick and Sophia couldn't parse the words but she watched Rylie listen to it and file it away without reacting.
Then Rylie asked one final question.
The man looked at her for a long moment.
Something moved through his expression—not fear, not pain, something closer to resolution.
The particular stillness of someone who has already decided.
He moved his hand away from his leg. His chin dropped to his chest. When it came back up his jaw was working, just slightly, and Rylie was already lunging forward saying “don't—” but it was too late.
His body seized once, hard. The foam came fast, white at the corners of his mouth, and his legs kicked twice against the concrete in short involuntary spasms and then went still.
It took less than a minute.
Rylie stood over him. She looked at what was in front of her for a long moment, her face doing the careful neutral thing it did when something needed to be managed before it could be felt. Then she turned and walked to Sophia, putting herself deliberately between Sophia and what was on the floor.
“He had a capsule,” she said. “Concealed. We missed it.”
Sophia looked past her anyway. At the foam. At the stillness of him. At the absolute deliberateness of what he had chosen.
“Aw, fuck,” Angie shouted through the comm.
Before she even said what was wrong, Sophia knew. The man outside had done the same thing. He’d killed himself.