Chapter 16 #2
“Who the hell are you!?” The doctor demands. Funny, he believes I owe him that answer. I huff a laugh and dig my knee in a bit further just for the stupid question, causing him to scream. I love that sound. It feeds my deranged soul.
But to answer his question and to add a little extra torment, “I’m Shadow, AKA your worst nightmare.” I watch as his eyes bug out of his head, lost for words. He already knows his fate at this point.
Hayden pops up from behind the bed and strides over, squatting down in front of the old man.
“Now, just a little pinch.” He says mockingly, while holding the syringe up dramatically, like in the horror movies.
The old man starts thrashing and bucking, trying to knock me off.
It’s no use, I’m twice his size and in much better shape.
Hayden slams his head on the tile floor, bursting his nose.
Blood spurts down his face and splatters the floor.
“This is for whatever you’ve done to our girl.” He growls, then stabs the needle in his neck.
The man is out cold in seconds, so now we have to find a place to stash him for the time being.
“Yo, T?”
“Yeah?”
“Where can I put this sick fuck?”
“There’s a supply closet on the right just outside of the room you’re in. Stuff him in there. So far, your path is clear, so go to the security room. I’ll explain when you get there.”
Hayden and I share a look of confusion. What could possibly be so important in there that we need to hold off on rescuing Kelsey to see?
We stashed his unconscious body in the closet and made it to the security room without issue.
“Alright, what now?” Hayden asks for me.
“I have some footage pulled up on the screens. You need to see this before you get to Kelsey. I have our medic team on the way. She’s going to require extensive care and tests.”
My heart sinks, and anger has blood rushing in my ears.
My finger hovers over the mouse, hesitant to click play.
I love causing pain to my enemies, but pain inflicted on what’s mine strikes a different nerve.
Honestly, the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she would be mine.
I just have to make her see that for herself after I get her back.
I’ve thought about her nonstop since the first time we ever spoke, and when she wrote her number on my wrist in her sloppy, drunken handwriting, my heart was doing backflips in my chest.
I finally built the courage to hit play.
We’re taken back to hours before when they first brought Kelsey here.
They pull up in the Mercedes we searched for.
There are two men, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties.
I watch as the passenger exits, and he smiles at Kelsey, but the smile is far from friendly.
After Kelsey is pulled out, she immediately drops him to the ground with a kick to his dick and bolts for the woods.
“That’s our fucking girl!!” Hayden exclaims, and a little bit of hope forms in my heart. Two questions are running through my head right now. One, did she escape? And two, if she did, where the hell could she be?
A group of men runs after her, and one of them fires a gun. I’ve never felt panic the way I’m feeling it right now. This utterly helpless feeling. We’re too fucking late, she’s probably dead somewhere, and I will never be able to live with myself.
The video cuts to another clip where Kelsey is draped over a man’s shoulder.
Blood steadily drips from her face, but her matted brown hair covers it so I can’t see where it’s coming from.
She’s covered in dirt and bruises, with sticks and leaves poking out of her hair.
My heart cracks. She’s so tiny and lifeless.
I look at Hayden, who looks equally as devastated.
The next clip begins. I’m speechless as I watch the girl of my dreams—very much alive—restrained to the hospital bed in the medical room.
“Hello, dear. I’m Lilith,” that voice. That specific voice elicits goosebumps to rise across my arms and neck. I’ve heard that voice once before, and a memory comes whooshing back to me.
“Hello, Shadow.” Greets the voice from the other end of the phone.
I gulp as realization strikes me. The emails I’ve received for weeks were from her.
Telling me to join her and all will be rainbows and unicorns.
I never fell for the scheme. I never will.
This is my OP, and I’ll be damned if I hand it all over for “freedom” as she’s called it.
Threatening to turn me in to the FEDS if I don’t comply.
Despite my lack of acknowledgment, she continues. “Have you made your decision yet?”
I hang up the phone because she’ll never get what she wants from me, and I’d love to see her try to take it.
Moments later, I received another email titled, “This is the bed you’ve made, now lie in it.” A shudder runs through me as I click block and delete. That was such a weird thing to say.
That was the day I paid off the mayor to cover our tracks and prevent any legal issues from arising. That was also four years ago, so I had forgotten all about it and tied it up to nothing more than a failed attempt at taking my OP.
Based on Kelsey’s body language, I can tell she knows Lilith.
Kelsey’s scared and obviously trembling.
Then Lilith speaks again, confirming what I was thinking.
But it doesn’t make any sense. How would they know each other?
That clip ends and cuts to that bastard doctor injecting Kelsey with something he calls his special serum to help intakes adjust. White-hot rage pulses through my veins.
My teeth are clenched painfully tight, and I feel my jaw pop.
The end of the clip shows where they took her, but minutes before, a masked man entered the dark room.
I shove his appearance to memory for future use and stand abruptly.
“We need to find Stub and this man who went into her room,” I say, rushing towards the door.
“The last footage’s timestamp was in the past hour, so hopefully we’ve made it in time.”
He doesn’t have to say what we’re hoping hasn’t happened yet. We’ve seen enough to know what happens in places like this.
A throat clears in my ear, “The man that was in the room with Kelsey goes by Rocky.”
“What do you mean by was, T?” I ask with a snarl. He was supposed to be on top of this shit.
“He’s headed your way. I suggest keeping him for interrogation, too.”
“Gee, thanks for the notice.” I snark. I can basically hear his eyes rolling.
I know he’s doing a lot right now, and I should be more appreciative, but this is my and Hayden’s lives on the line, and without us, Kelsey may never be rescued.
The last thing we need is somebody sneaking up on us and potentially having the upper hand.
Stepping back out into the hall, we stand side by side with our arms relaxed in front of us.
The alarms continue to blare and have become nothing more than background noise at this point.
One hand holding our guns and the other rests on our wrists.
Ready to fire if need be. I would prefer not to make the fucker bleed very much, considering I need all the information he has and will need to save that bloodshed for future torture.
The door hinges groan as the once-masked man rushes through it as if in a hurry.
“Got somewhere to be?” I ask in my signature asshole voice.
The man staggers back, lifting his hands in surrender. Perfect. His eyes are as wide as saucers and pupils so dilated there’s no color to them.
I nod my head to the side towards Hayden, “Dude’s high as a fucking kite right now.” Hayden huffs a laugh.
“Who are you?” He asks. The smug bastard’s confidence has quickly diminished.
“Why does everybody keep asking that?” I ask derisively.
He takes a step forward, and my spine straightens. “I wouldn’t do that,” I warn, keeping my facial expression lax and smooth. Motherfucker must be finding a little courage in there somewhere. Apparently, he’s only got balls when it comes to taking advantage of innocent women.
T gives a brief update in my ear, letting us know the coast is still clear aside from the fucker standing in front of us.
“I’ll make a deal with you.” I offer, and he lifts a single brow before nodding once.
“You tell me where the new intake is, and I won’t hurt you,” I failed to mention ‘as bad’, but it was implied, and he’ll learn that sooner or later.
He crosses his arms, contemplating my offer. “Otherwise, your torture begins…” I glance down at my watch. “Now.” I cock my head.
“She’s in the basement, go straight down, it’s the chamber on the right.”
I already knew where she was, but that was a test to check his honesty.
Now, for what I really want to know. I jerk him up to eye level by the front of his shirt, “I already knew that. What did you do to her? And don’t even think about lying.
” I snarl. “I have hacked every single surveillance camera in this godsforsaken place.”
I don’t actually know what’s happened in that chamber, yet. But he doesn’t know that. I can tell that question’s made him uncomfortable, and fuck if that doesn’t make my stomach knot. Icy hot rage washes over me, and I’m doing everything to hold back from strangling him.
“Aye, bro, she came into me.” He says, throwing his hands back up.
“So we’ve resorted to lying, huh?” I aim the sight of my gun right over his heart. I won’t shoot him, at least not to kill, but he’d better start confessing before he’s in the type of pain he could never imagine.
“We’re not your bro’s,” Hayden growls. His emotions are a lot harder to mask than mine. I already know he’s got a permanent snarl on his face.
Rocky jumps from the left to the right of the narrow hall, attempting to throw me and Hayden off. We’re far too trained to fall for that mediocre bullshit. “Big mistake, Rocky.”
He pauses for half a second before running straight at us.
As soon as he’s close enough, I rear my fists back and swing, connecting with his jaw.
I’m not sure if the crunch was his face or my hand.
The idiot lies limp on the floor, testing to see if he’s conscious or not.
I kick him in the rib with my boot. Not so much as a peep comes out of him.
“Help me drag this waste of air and space to the closet. We need to give him a heavy dose of that tranquilizer, too.” I start listing the next tasks.
After dumping this piece of shit with the other piece of shit, I need to find one more piece of shit—Lilith.
We slowly walk through the curving hallway down to the basement.
After reaching the end where the space opens up, I’m speechless.
It looks like a prison, except prisoners are treated like royalty in comparison to these people.
“Were all these people abducted, too?” Hayden asks as if I would know that answer.
“I don’t know. But we need to hurry and find Kelsey before somebody else pops up on us.”
We walk past a guant woman, nothing but a skeletal heap lying on the bare concrete floor.
A thin, white, and deteriorating gown barely covers her, hanging just below her bottom.
If it weren’t for her weak, shallow breaths, I would have assumed she was dead.
Dirt covers every inch of her frail body, and her hair is a matted mess.
An aching twinge stabs at my heart. This is horrifying.
None of the other captives looks any better. All bordering death.
Empty hollow eyes glare back at me through another cell.
The woman is clinging to the bars so tightly her knuckles have turned a scary shade of white.
Handprint bruises wrap her tiny arms. She doesn’t act afraid of us, but more like she’s intrigued, as if we’re the caged animals in this zoo and not her.
She’s probably drugged out of her mind and isn’t even seeing us for what we are.
One girl stands out to me the most. The eyes glaring at us, pleading with us silently.
Like she has a story she needs to tell, but is afraid to.
Her dark skin was mottled with bruises and fresh scars.
She grips her knees tight to her chest in the back corner of her cell.
Not once does she take her eyes off mine, nor does she blink.
I make a mental note to come back for her.
I wish I could save everyone here, and I’ll try my best to, but it won’t be today.
“I think this is the room straight ahead,” Hayden points out, bringing me back from my thoughts.
I nod and walk faster towards the room. We still have plenty of time to get Kelsey, the other girl, and our two douchebags out of here before the tranquilizer starts to wear off.
“Backup is heading in. Where do you want them?” T asks.
I didn’t know he was still sending them out, so I never thought of a plan for them. That was supposed to be his job, since he was orchestrating it.
“Figure it out. I have a bigger issue. Is the room clear?” I ask as I wait on the other side of her chamber door. I don’t want to go in guns blazing and traumatize her any more than has already been done.
“All clear, I didn’t look any more than I had to, I felt like I was violating her.”
What the fuck does that mean? Not wasting any time, Hayden and I stand back-to-back and jam our shoulders into the wood. At least this one wasn’t steel again. The door slams open, and a terrified whimper echoes from across the room. My heart splits, and a punch to the gut would have hurt less.
“Kelsey?” My voice cracks.
Garbled words of panic come from somewhere in the dark room. “Where the fuck are the lights?” I hurried, swiping my hands up and down the walls, and called Hayden to help on the other wall.
“We’re here, baby, stay calm.” I doubt my words are any comfort to her. I hope she can forgive me for being so stupid and terrible to her. I will spend my lifetime making it up to her.
“Here!” Hayden calls just as the lights illuminate the dingy room around us.
Blood red wallpaper hangs loosely from the moldy walls, which explains the stench.
As I drag my eyes around the room in disgust, my eyes soften, and my heart sinks when they land on Kelsey.
I don’t notice Hayden as I run to her side, dropping to one knee beside the raggedy bed.
“Kelsey,” I breathe.