Four
FANG
The dirt and dust that coats the outside of the windows makes it near fucking impossible to peek inside, but seeing as there isn’t a single light on or sign of central heat when I press my hand to the glass, I’d say nobody’s home.
“You think they’re laying low, waiting to merc us when we ain’t looking?” Darko cups his hands to the pane beside mine and squints at the interior of the old house.
“Dunno,” I drawl. “But I’m positive that’s a great way to make a fucking target out of your head.”
He pulls back, grin wide.
The kid’s green. Our youngest officer at the table. But he’s smart and a problem solver. Just not when it comes to keeping his head in one piece, it seems.
“No lock.” He stares at the cellar door behind me. “I was fucking sure this was the right address, but it doesn’t give me vibes that there’s anyone here.”
Darko spent days tracking down the communication lines, piecing together the clues to arrive at the facts we used to create our strategy. The texts from the jailers indicated they’d be offsite for a while, but we never considered the possibility that the location was wrong.
I cast my eye across the fields, to the properties beyond.
If we’re just one number out, close but no cigar, we risk giving away our intent before we’ve made any fucking progress.
I don’t want to admit it, but Darko could be right.
Chaos and Jinx went left when we arrived to scout the garage several feet from the house, and I haven’t heard any commotion from their side yet.
“Look, I’d hate for us to be wrong about the place, but I guess that’s a good thing if there isn’t anyone here,” I appease.
“Maybe it means they don’t hold women in Temperance like we’ve been led to believe.
” Although I could argue it’s also a bad thing considering we’d be back to square one, trying to figure out where the Devil’s Breed do have the women.
There’s no doubting they moved the ‘stock’ as they call them by van through our territory, unnoticed until someone pointed out the fucking patched riders following five minutes behind.
Stupid fucks. Too proud and too ignorant to think about taking off the patch for one fucking day to blend in.
They’d rather get high off the fear their name invokes than do the job right.
But it was the word of a man who couldn’t be trusted that said they were held here.
It was the whole fucking reason Chaos shot the Devil’s Breed member.
Darko grabs one of the hinged timber cellar doors and lifts it open, dropping it to the side with a crack of wood on dirt. He repeats the action with the other and then tilts his head.
“What?”
He lifts a hand to shush me. “Listening.”
I stand beside him and stare down the stairs at the dusty floor and yellowed cardboard boxes visible to one side. “Hear anything?”
“Thought I did.” He shrugs. “But maybe I imagined it.” Gun drawn, he starts down the stairs.
I glance to the right and note the bars over the small ground-level window. Not unusual—most people have them for security. But it tickles the ridges of my brain as I follow Darko underneath the house.
He holsters his weapon and nods toward a crude door centered on a roughly built partition wall to the right of the staircase.
The barred window makes further indentations in my gray matter.
Maybe we weren’t wrong. Again, there’s no lock.
Just a heavy-duty slide bolt that makes it hard for anyone to break out unless they trained in fucking Tae Kwon Do or some shit.
It screams arrogance, the kind of attitude that assumes nobody would dare step foot down here other than them.
I step up to the door and lift my hand to the bolt, then pause, leaning forward to hover my ear close to the timber.
Breathing? Is that someone hyperventilating on the other side?
One way to find out.
I slide the bolt free, glance over my shoulder to check Darko covers me, and then tug the door open.
Dark eyes, a smattering of freckles across her nose, and black hair cut in a wild bob at her shoulders, the woman stares me down. “Who the fuck are you?” A fresh bruise shades her right temple.
Her clothes are dirty, and she looks fucking wrecked, but even so, there’s something about the way she stands defiant in front of the others to protect them that has me impressed.
Perhaps driven by anger, maybe driven by fear.
Whatever motivates her, she glares at me with such intensity that I feel compelled to stay on my side of the threshold.
I glance around their area of confinement, but the lack of light makes it hard to make out the finer details of the shadows in the back of the room. “How many of you are there?” Intel said four, but I’m pretty damn sure I see at least five people in here.
“Are you going to answer my question?” Freckles holds her left arm at her side, slightly behind her.
I squint a little and make out a redheaded woman at her shoulder, one hand to her mouth to chew on a nail.
“Is there anybody else around?” I ask. “Like the person who brought you here.”
Chances are fear will make them lie and say no, but it’s not their words I want. It’s the body language. The little things the voice won’t say but the eyes can’t hide.
“How do we know you aren’t friends of theirs?” The question comes from a brunette seated to my left.
I grab hold of Darko and spin him around, shoving him into the space next to me so they can see his patch. “Different club.”
He shakes me off, straightening his cut.
“Means shit,” Freckles says. “You assholes all work together.”
“Guess you don’t know as much as you think you do, then.” I open my mouth to request a body count again, yet catch movement in my periphery. “Oh, no you don’t.” I lean down to stop the brunette woman from attempting to slip past my legs.
Her eyes shift to mine, brown and sincere, before she flicks her gaze ever so briefly up toward the freckled inquisitor.
A shoulder hits mine, and the black-haired woman goddamn throws herself into me like she executes an offensive play, shunting me off balance and into Darko, to then bolt out the door.
“Fuck!” I block the brunette from pushing past my leg with a knee, and lunge for the skinny Latino woman who emerges from the back of the room. “Stop!”
“With all due respect,” another woman to my left says, “No.” She rises to her feet with a wince, effectively drawing my focus toward her as the redhead slips past my offside. Young and fit, the protester’s dark skin can’t hide the evidence of the abuse these women have endured.
“Christ’s sake,” Darko hollers. “Get it under control.” He captures the redhead, but the skittish girl slips his grip to scale the stairs on all fours like the hounds of hell are after her.
“We’re here to fucking help,” I yell, bracing myself against the doorframe to effect a blockade.
The one at my feet sinks her teeth into my calf, but more fool her. Denim isn’t easy to penetrate.
“Goddamn it! Cut it out!” I reach down to push her off with my left hand, right still attempting to block the door, and catch sight of something move behind the brunette. The fuck? “Is that a goddamn child?”
“Congratulations,” the Black woman sasses. “You have eyes.”
Yeah. Eyes that keep noting how she shutters hers with each word as though the vibration of the syllables hurts her brain.
“Quit making it worse for yourselves,” Darko hollers to the small group as he wrestles the redhead into submission. “We’re here to take you away from this shithole, but we can’t do that if you all scatter like stray cats.”
“And why would we believe you?” the brunette asks, arm behind her to protect/console the child.
I glance to the hurt woman on my right and realize what I had thought was a shadow behind her is a dried puddle of blood. “What happened there?”
The injured woman glances to the ground with another wince. “Pretty sure you can guess.”
Typical. Try to do a good deed and get stuck with the most smart-mouthed woman known to ever be in captivity. “Fang,” I introduce, placing my left hand to my chest.
“I know. I can read.” She nods to my badge, face softening a little at my resulting frustration. “Nandi.”
“Hi, Nandi. Mind telling me why you keep grimacing when you move?”
“I hurt my head.” Her upper lip twitches. “I’m fine, though.”
Hundred bucks says she ain’t. “You good enough to help me get these women out of here?”
Hollers and squeals come from the top of the stairs where the skinny girl’s presumably been caught. Something in my gut tells me the freckled inquisitor would have got away. Like recognizes like, and I know well the kind of raw-dogged determination I found in her eyes.
“How do we know we can trust you to do what you say?” Nandi asks, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How do we know you won’t just steal us for yourselves?”
“I opened the door, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” the brunette quips. “But you haven’t let us out yet.”
I turn my head toward her. “Were you going to sit quietly and listen to what I had to say if I had?” I ask. “Because I get the weirdest feeling that you might not have.”
“The man who put you here is on his way back,” Darko informs the women. “We can leave you here for him if you like?”
“Which one?” the brunette asks.
I frown, exchanging a look with Darko before asking, “What do you mean?”
“There are two of them,” Nandi fills in. “They take turns.”
Fuck. “We need to hurry this up,” Darko says, phone in one hand, weeping redhead in the other. “They’ll be here any minute.”
I cast my eye over the women in the room. “You might not trust me yet, but I’m gonna need to trust you if we’re going to pull this off. Do as I say—ask questions later. No fucking running. And no fucking biting.” I stare at the brunette. “Think you lot can do that?”
She sighs, and then helps the child to her feet. “Can’t be any worse than what’ll happen if we stay.”
Going off the stain on the floor, I’d say it can’t be any worse than what’s already happened.
I take a step back and nod toward the stairs. “You might want to run.”