Chapter 28
Raeleen
“Ow,” I groaned as I woke up. The blinding pain in my head was throbbing in time with my heartbeat. But my heart was beating and I considered that a win.
“Here.”
Jerking at the sound of the voice near me, I peeked open my eyes and found Forge squatting there in front of me. He was holding out a bottle of water. I took it and drank nearly the whole thing in one go. “Where are we?”
We were in some kind of building. I didn’t recognize it, though the scent of lumber was heavy in the air.
“Old saw mill out off twenty.”
I focused on him again. “You seem to know your way around Sentinel.”
“Been here a lot over the last year,” he replied, standing up to his full height and forcing me to crane my neck.
I set the water down and started to stand up. The world took a lazy tumble and I had to slap a hand against the wall to keep from toppling over.
“Careful. You took a couple blows to the head tonight. I’m no doctor but you probably have a concussion.”
Nodding, I blinked hard a few times, trying to clear my vision. “Why did you try to help me?”
“Still helping you here, Lady.”
“But…why?” It wasn’t that I wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I didn’t understand and I needed to. “You killed your own men to protect me.”
He scoffed and shot me a disdainful look. “I’ve been waiting to kill those two assholes. Higgins is lucky he wasn’t down there with them or he’d be floating down the fucking river, too.” He twirled a knife in his hand absentmindedly, then tucked it away behind his back.
I had no idea who Higgins was. I shook my head in disbelief.
He sighed and scratched his chest absently. “I have…desires.” When I raised my eyebrows, he clarified, “Some people mistake them for a moral line.”
Before I could unpack that very ominous statement the door slammed open and a man eyed us with suspicion. “Forge you piece of shit! You were supposed to let Dunn know when she woke up-”
Forge snapped his arm out and the man’s words stopped as he started making a gurgling noise in his throat. He fell to his knees, hands scrabbling at his throat as he tried to pull the knife now embedded there out.
Forge’s hands were empty a second ago, I saw him put the knife away. I hadn’t even seen him grab the knife.
“Higgins,” Forge said by way of explanation as he jerked his chin at the dying man.
I stared at Forge in silent shock.
“No one ever said it was a straight line,” he told me with a grin, going back to our conversation before Higgins joined us. “It’s more of a…” He made a zig zag motion with his finger.
“Well…I’m grateful,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I watched in silence as he walked over to the dead body and pulled the knife out.
“That one doesn’t belong to you,” he told the dead body as he bent and cleaned the blade on Higgins’s shirt. “Don’t be grateful yet,” he said, turning toward me again. “We still have to get you out of here.”
“Okay. Is there a window we can crawl out of or something?”
His lip curled in disgust. “I’m not climbing out a window, Lady.”
“My name is Rae,” I reminded him.
“Lady’s fine.” He motioned toward the door.
“There’s twenty-eight…seven,” he corrected, kicking the body at his feet, “men out there waiting for you to wake up. Once Dolan questions you about the shipment, he’s going to hand you over to them to do whatever they want.
” A grim look settled on his face. “They aren’t the kind of men to do anything nice to you. ”
“O-kay. So then why is the window not an option?”
He didn’t bother to answer my question. “Stick close and I’ll do my best to get you out the back before they realize you’re missing.”
Window. Back door. I didn’t care how he helped me escape as long as I wasn’t given over to that group of men out there. “What shipment do they all keep talking about?”
He opened the door a crack and maneuvered himself so he could look out without being seen. “Ecstasy. It was earmarked for a buyer who was willing to pay top dollar for it.”
“And that’s what the dead man by the bridge was doing?”
“Yeah. He was supposed to be taking it to Idaho.”
“I wonder why he was so far down Warren Road then?” I asked out loud. “He would’ve needed to stay on the highway-”
“He ran into an unsavory character who wanted the Ecstasy.”
I frowned. “Who even knew he had it besides your…” I broke off, studying the smug look on Forge’s face. “Wait. Did you kill him?”
“Coast’s clear,” he replied, evading my question. I had no idea what was going on with any of this, but I wasn’t going to delay escaping to ask. “Stay on my ass and don’t make a sound.”
I crept out after him, head swinging this way and that as I looked for anyone who could be a threat.
It was my assumption that anyone in this building other than Forge was, so all movement was suspect.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure we weren’t being followed, then inadvertently plowed into Forge’s back when he stopped.
He grunted at the contact, then scowled at me over his shoulder. Though he didn’t say anything, he shook his head.
‘Sorry’, I mouthed at him. My hands were shaking. I wished I still had Owen’s gun. It wasn’t like I was very good with it, but at least I’d have something to protect myself with. Reaching out, I grabbed the back of Forge’s shirt to make sure I kept close like he asked.
He paused and gave me an incredulous look over his shoulder again.
I shrugged, then nodded my head, indicating for him to keep moving.
As if I was in charge here. I wondered if both of us managed to get out of here alive if maybe he’d be interested in one of my friends.
He was an incredibly handsome man, and didn’t have a ring on his finger.
Sure, it was a crazy thought to be having right now, but I needed the distraction because every shifting shadow was making my heart rate spike in preparation for a fight.
Of course, did I want one of my friends dating someone who killed indiscriminately?
But then again, he didn’t, did he? Like he said, he had a moral line, or something like it.
Apparently women were off limits, even if his own people weren’t.
“Duck,” he said in such a low voice I almost didn’t hear him.
Duck? Duck where? I looked around frantically for a place to hide, but we were going down a long hallway and there weren’t any doors on one side, the other opened up down onto a factory floor below.
Maybe that was why he didn’t want to go out the window.
We were on the second story of this building.
I crouched down, waiting as he did the same. There were men milling around down below. They were standing around some kind of platform. A single man stepped up on the platform and began talking in a booming voice.
“That’s Mark Dolan,” Forge said, turning toward me as he spoke so that he didn’t have to raise his voice. “Leader of this crew.”
I peeked over the side of the railing. The guy wasn’t super impressive.
Not like the bikers. He wasn’t all that tall.
Maybe five-ten? And he had a balding patch on the very top of his head.
He just wasn’t what I expected the leader of a gang, and a drug lord, to look like.
Not that I’d ever seen either of those two types of people.
But the books I read would have me believe he’d be a tall, ripped, gorgeous man.
“Follow me,” Forge said again, moving forward slowly and still crouching.
I moved with him, doing my best not to catch anyone’s attention.
Ahead of us was another hallway that I hoped would lead to some stairs and out of here.
I really, really didn’t want to see what was going to happen if these men got their hands on me.
Pyre’s smile flashed through my mind and I wondered if he even knew I was missing yet?
I’d give anything to see him right now. To have him wrap his strong arms around me so I felt safe and protected.
We made it across the open walkway without incident and I blew out a relieved breath as we stood to our full heights again and were able to move faster. My head was still pounding, but it was something I shoved to the background. I didn’t have time to focus on that for now.
“Stairs are this way-” Noise on the stairs had us freezing. “Shit. Go back. Go back.”
I doubled back and opened the first door I came to near the top of the stairs. Looking around, I was grateful no one was in here right now. Most of them seemed to be in that meeting.
Forge shut the door in my face. “Sterns.”
“I thought the boss had you watching over the woman, Forge?”
“Higgins told me to get my ass downstairs. That Dolan had something he wanted to talk to me about.”
“Huh. Not what I heard. Dunn sent me up here to have us bring the woman down. Dolan wants to talk to her.”
“Figures Higgins would fuck the message up. He’s watching over her now. I’ll go help you with her.”
“Yeah, sure. First I need to grab something from the armory.”
“What’d you need, Sterns? I probably have it right here on my belt.”
There was a moment of silence. I looked over my shoulder and my blood ran cold as I realized why Forge was holding the guy up.
I was standing smack dab in the middle of the room that had to be their armory.
There were pistols, rifles, shotguns, brass knuckles, knives, and all sorts of other sharp implements in here.
So much in here that Pyre’s brothers would feel like kids in a candy store.
Sucking in a breath, I grabbed a knife off a shelf, then hurried behind said shelf to hide. I bit the insides of my lips as the door opened.
“Never known you to be generous with your weapons, Forge,” Sterns said as stepped into the room.
Forge came in after him, his eyes sweeping around until they landed on me, then focused on the other man. “I can be a helpful guy.”
Sterns snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
I held my breath as he came close to the shelf I was hiding behind. I didn’t dare move, not even to make myself smaller because the movement would catch his eye.
My breath whooshed out of me when he went to grab a gun from the shelf and our gazes met. His eyes widened and he shouted.
Forge stormed forward, but two more men burst into the room.
They must have been coming up the stairs at just the wrong time.
The room was too small and crowded for a fire fight—and we certainly didn’t want to alert the men down in the pit of what was happening up here—so Forge pulled out his knife.
“I’ll be back for you, sweetheart,” Sterns sneered. He loaded the gun with a fresh magazine and started to turn.
He was going to shoot Forge. The only friend I had in here right now. My only way of getting out. And someone who was sticking their neck out for me.
Gripping my newly acquired knife, I ran out from my hiding spot and hit Sterns’s back. I clung on like a deranged spider monkey while he flailed back and forth, trying to get me off. It wasn’t going to take him long.
I squeezed the knife tight and brought it down in a sideways arc. I’d barely had to look, considering how well I knew human anatomy. My knife slid like butter through the flesh between his ribs, puncturing his lung. I yanked the knife back out and stuck him two more times, to be on the safe side.
He stumbled around while I rode him like a wild horse, unwilling to let him go.
I didn’t want him to still try to go after Forge.
Or me. Finally, he fell to his knees, clutching at his chest as he wheezed for breath.
I backed away from him. He was suffocating.
It was a slow, awful way to go, but I didn’t have it in me to end him.
It was one thing to shoot a man. But to cut his throat, or stab him somewhere like the throat or heart? I wasn’t quite ready for that.
He fell over sideways, breathing shallow and rapid until it stopped all together. I clutched the bloodied knife to my chest and looked over at Forge.
He’d killed the two men and was standing there watching me. “Keep that,” he told me.
“Do you think they heard us?”
He stared at me as though I was an idiot. Then he waved me forward. “Run back to the back of the building. Back the way we came.” He opened the door and stuck his head out. “Hurry up. They’re coming.”
“W-what about you?”
“I’ll hold them off.”
“Twenty-seven of them?” I asked.
“Twenty-four now,” he told me with a grin. He shoved me out into the hallway. “Run.”
I backed away as the sound of boots on wooden stairs grew louder.
Looking from the stairwell to him, I finally turned and ran.
I wasn’t sure where to go, but I’d find a hiding spot.
I wished again that Pyre was here. Or better yet, that I was tucked against his side at home in my bed.
That this was all a nightmare. Bullets started flying around me for the second time today.