36. Tank
Tank
The warehouse is exactly the shithole I expected from Southside's goons. There's corrugated metal and concrete everywhere, barbed wire, tagged crumbling walls.
Just like Cyrus's monitors showed, two men are walking the same loop by the loading door, the one on the left smoking, the one on the right checking his phone about every ninety seconds.
Two soon-to-be dead men.
But with Ellie behind me in a bulletproof vest and baseball cap, I have to play this safer than I normally would.
Cyrus is in my earpiece, Jinx is somewhere on the other side of the lot. We're all armed to the teeth. I feel Ellie's warmth through my jacket, her breathing hitching like it does when she counts.
I reach back without looking and find her hand. Her fingers close around two of mine and she squeezes.
"Generator goes in thirty seconds," Cyrus says in my ear. "Once it's dark, we have about a fifteen-second window before their eyes adjust. Don't waste it."
I tap the comm twice. Copy.
Ellie's grip tightens.
The two men by the loading door have settled into their rhythm. They smoke, they check their phones, each of them walks about ten paces in his own direction, and then they turn around. They look bored out of their minds, cold as balls, and they're about to die.
But the minimum entry requirement for joining Southside's crew is to be an absolute shithead, so it's fair game.
They're also at a disadvantage because they're working off the assumption that no one is stupid enough to show up tonight.
They're wrong about that.
The generator dies and the warehouse goes black. Even the security light.
Ellie releases my hand. She knows the drill. The condition for us bringing her on this mission. I check to make sure she's safely concealed behind the long metal wall ringing the property before I move.
The smoker sees me first.
Or doesn't see me, really.
But he registers the shadow that's suddenly too close and too big, and his hand goes for the gun at his waistband but I'm already there. My fist meets the side of his head and his skull bounces off the corrugated wall. His body folds like a lawn chair. The cigarette hits the gravel still lit.
The phone guy opens his mouth and Jinx materializes out of the dark. His forearm closes around the man's throat from behind and squeezes. He's a hell of a lot stronger than he looks.
The phone clatters to the ground, screen cracking on impact, and the man's hands claw uselessly at Jinx's arm for about four seconds before his eyes roll back in his head and his body goes slack.
Jinx lowers him to the ground, quiet and disturbingly gentle. Then he flashes me a grin one second before he double taps the son of a bitch.
Fucking psycho in designer boots.
"Lights out," Cyrus says, and I can hear him typing through the comms. "You're clear for entry but the side door's deadbolted. Tank, you're up."
"I've got Princess," Jinx says, already darting back for the fence to get our girl.
Our girl.
When did I start living in a world where she actually is mine?
The side door is steel with a handle I could probably rip off the frame if I was feeling dramatic, but there's no time for showmanship. I put my shoulder into it once, hard, and the bolt rips through the rotted wood of the frame with a teeth-grinding sound.
Inside is dark and it stinks of diesel, but I guess that's better than blood.
"Hallway, twenty yards, door on the left," Cyrus's voice guides us through this shithole of a maze. "That's where the heat signature is."
I go first with Jinx behind me, and Ellie behind him, just like she promised.
The hallway is narrow enough that my shoulders brush up against the walls on either side, and there's enough grime on the concrete to stick to my boots.
A pipe rattles and drips somewhere else in the building and that damn rhythm is bound to get stuck in my head.
There's a strip of light glowing under the door on the left. I look back at Ellie to make sure she's still behind me. She's paler in the dark, and frail looking even under that bulletproof vest. But her eyes meet mine and she nods once, looking completely confident.
I kick the door in.
The room is nearly bare, save for a bulb swinging from the ceiling, a metal table, and a folding chair.
Kade is sitting in the chair, but barely.
For a second my brain stalls because he looks like a corpse.
His face is swollen to the point where one eye is sealed completely shut, the skin around it gone a purple so dark it's almost black.
Blood has dried in a crust from his hairline down the right side of his face, and his lip is split in two places.
His wrists are zip-tied behind the chair and his head hangs forward, chin on his chest.
He's not moving.
A horrible, monstrous animal sound comes out of me. I never wanted to make that sound in front of Ellie and it bounces off the concrete.
"Kade." Ellie pushes past me and she's across the room in half a second, her hands going to Kade's face and tilting it up. "Kade, hey. Hey." Her voice cracks. "Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes right now."
I can't move. My whole body has locked up like it does when whatever I'm afraid of is something I can't fight with my fists.
I can fight men. I can break doors and bend metal and put people through walls and I'm very fucking good at all of those things.
But I can't put my brother back together or pour the blood back into his body.
Jinx joins Ellie on the floor, hands hovering like he doesn't know where to apply pressure.
Ellie just kneels on the floor beside the chair, pulling a knife from somewhere, and cuts the zip ties from his wrists with her small, shaking hands. His arms drop to his sides like dead weight and she catches the nearest one, her fingers pressing against the inside of his wrist.
"Pulse is there," she says. Her voice is still choked, but steadier than anyone else's would be in this clusterfuck of a situation. "It's fast but it's there. Tank, I need you."
Everything feels distant and smoky, just like it did when I found him in that burning RV only then, my body acted on its own to pull him out of it.
Now, it's frozen. The sound of my name in Ellie's voice finally unlocks me.
I cross the room in two steps and crouch beside her, and Kade's weight sags sideways into my arms. He's heavy and limp, burning hot through his ruined shirt.
"We need to move," Jinx says. He's already at the door, checking the hall. "Whoever did this might have backup, and I'd rather not find out the hard way."
I scoop Kade off the floor. His head falls against my shoulder and I feel the hitch in his breathing and the damp rattle underneath it that means at least one rib has gone somewhere it shouldn't have. He makes a sound when I lift him into an upright position, pained but still unconscious.
I'm here, brother. Hang on.
We start to leave and Kade stirs.
His head lifts off my shoulder maybe two inches, which is clearly the maximum his body can manage right now. His feet automatically shuffle a little, so I don't have to completely haul him.
"Tank?" he asks in a raw voice.
I make a sound to let him know I heard him.
His good eye moves and finds Jinx over my shoulder. Then Ellie. "Fuck is she doin' here?"
"Nice to see you, too, asshole," Ellie quips, but there's no actual anger in her voice. She's as relieved he's up and talking as I am.
Well, more or less up. If it wasn't for his arm draped over my shoulder, he'd drop like a sack of potatoes.
"She kind of insisted. In case you haven't noticed, she's stubborn," Jinx says flatly.
"I wasn't going to pass up the chance to rescue you and never let you hear the end of it," she says dryly.
Kade glares, even in his current state. "'S fucking dangerous."
"How chivalrous."
"Okay you two, save it for the bedroom," Jinx chimes in. "Right now, we have to get out of this shithole. Preferably in four pieces rather than nine hundred."
Kade still looks like someone put him through a wood chipper. And yet the corner of his mouth twitches as he looks at her. Then back at me.
"Look at us," he slurs as he limps down the hall, my arm still supporting most of his weight. "Real brothers now."
I stare at him.
"Matching faces," he clarifies. His good eye squints like he's trying to wink and can't quite manage it. "Very handsome. Both of us."
I grunt. He's delirious and I'll take the joking over him being dead any day.
A second later, he's out again. I adjust his weight against my shoulder and head for the door.
We make it eight steps into the hall.
The first one comes from my left. A door that wasn't open before swings out hard and fast. Jinx takes the handle to the shoulder, staggers sideways.
Three of them. Possibly four. The hallway is too narrow to say for sure.
The nearest one raises a gun.
I don't even think. I swing Kade sideways, Ellie still behind all of us, and take the first shot to my bulletproof vest. Adrenaline makes the impact not even register.
Then I'm moving forward instead of back, intent on being a human wall between these fuckers and Ellie.
My elbow connects with the shooter's jaw on the way through and he drops hard.
Behind me, Ellie swears once, sharply, but she ducks and covers behind the nearest door. Smart. Jinx is already tangled with the second man, working in close where the gun can't aim right.
The third one almost gets around me. Not quite.
Ellie puts something at the back of his knee on his way by. A folding chair, WWE style.
I fucking love this woman.
When he stumbles, I grab the back of his neck and slam his head into the wall hard enough I hear a snap. His neck breaks and he's gone before he hits the ground.
Meanwhile, Jinx finally has the upper hand against the one he's been struggling with. He presses the barrel into the other man's chest, the shot is muffled by the body, and they both crumple.
"Jinx!" Ellie cries.
"I'm fine," Jinx croaks. "Just crushed."
I grab the back of the guy's jacket and haul him off Jinx, offering a hand to help him up. He takes it, raking his other hand through his hair once he's on his feet. "Thanks. Maybe you should be Knight."
I scoff, reaching to pull Kade back onto his feet. He's coming to again, just enough to shuffle along next to me. We hear footsteps and everyone freezes, Jinx and I putting ourselves in front of Ellie. I put myself in front of all of them, shifting Kade's semiconscious body onto Jinx.
Cyrus rounds the corner and my adrenaline bottoms out.
"Fucking finally," Jinx says through his teeth, shifting his slighter frame under Kade's weight.
"Fuck off. I had to relocate the getaway cars and there was another camera on the exterior I had to loop before you set it off and triggered everyone in Southside to come down here," Cyrus mutters, but I don't miss the way he checks on Jinx immediately after he finds Ellie behind us. Then he sees Kade. "Holy shit, is he—?"
"I'm fine," Kade groans. "Just need some fucking ice."
"You need a face transplant," Cyrus says, his eyes darting to me. "No offense, Tank."
I roll my eyes and trudge ahead, checking my clip. The sooner we get out of here, the better. Southside wasn't expecting us, but it won't be long before this place is crawling with the fuckers. And the police are as much of a concern if not more of one, given Todd's involvement in this bullshit.
We make it out of the building to where Cyrus has the getaway cars waiting.
I take Kade and Ellie, Cyrus and Jinx take the other car so they can lure anyone who follows us away.
Ellie settles in the back with Kade, who's in and out of consciousness, but still awake enough to bitch when she tries to check his wounds.
"Just a few punches, it's fine," he says, as if I didn't just haul his ass through the warehouse because he couldn't even stand on his own.
"Kade, it looks like someone took a fucking meat tenderizer to your head," she shoots back as I peel through the thin wire fence ringing the less secure end of the property. I check the rearview and see Cyrus and Jinx peeling out after us.
So far, so good.
But Todd is still out there, which means this shit is far from over.