Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kayne didn’t like this. That didn’t begin to cover it, but it was the cleanest version he could offer his brain while he pulled on his jacket and checked his weapon for the third time.
He’d learned early that when something felt wrong on a cellular level, you didn’t argue with it.
You planned around it and expected worst-case.
You assumed someone smarter than you had stacked the deck and was waiting for you to play your hand.
This felt like that kind of wrong. It was patient and didn’t rush because it didn’t need to.
The gym had to be a trap. A neat, polished, brightly lit ambush with new floors, carefully placed equipment, and too many memories layered under the surface. A ploy that smiled at you while it waited to close its teeth.
He trusted dark alleys more than places that pretended to be safe.
The countdown timer on the feed didn’t care about his instincts. Danica didn’t have the luxury of waiting for certainty, or for him to be wrong.
Kayne stood near the door as Chloe squared her shoulders, bracing herself.
“We don’t have to go in blind,” he said, keeping his voice even. “We can slow this down. Think it through.”
Chloe looked at him then, and there was fear, yes, but also resolve that didn’t crack when you leaned on it, but held fast under pressure.
“She’s running out of time,” Chloe said softly. “And so are we.”
Kayne nodded once. He wasn’t going to win this argument, and some part of him respected the hell out of that. Another part wanted to lock her in the safest room he could find and dismantle this piece by piece without her anywhere near it. He’d prefer to take the risk himself.
Protecting her had never been about permission. It had always been about inevitability.
“Then we stay together,” he said, not as a suggestion. He was drawing a line in the sand. “No heroics.”
She gave him a look that said she was deeply offended by the implication she’d ever do something reckless, as if the idea itself were insulting. It said she had never once made a questionable decision in her life and would like that slander noted for the record.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
#
The gym loomed ahead of them, dark against the night.
Its glass reflected streetlights and their own approaching shapes like phantoms moving toward a familiar haunting, echoes of themselves closing in.
Kayne automatically scanned the rooftops, alley mouths, cars that had no business being parked that close, anything that didn’t belong.
Anything that watched back.
Anja and Leo split off as planned the second they were on-site to circle the exterior. If there was another way in, some forgotten access point or clever little secret, it would be outside. They all wore comm devices to keep in touch and standard-issue Kevlar vests.
Inside was Kayne’s responsibility, which meant assuming the worst and being ready anyway.
He stayed close to Chloe as they entered, his presence a physical barrier whether she wanted it or noticed it. The lights snapped on, bathing the open space in sterile brightness that made every shadow harder, more suspicious.
The timer ticked down in the corner of his vision.
They moved methodically. Kayne checked sightlines while Chloe searched with the intimacy of someone who knew this place the way you knew your own kitchen in the dark. They looked in offices, storage rooms, locker rooms, behind the front desk, and under stairwells.
Nothing. Too much nothing. The absence pressed in on him, louder than noise ever was.
“Clock’s still running,” Chloe murmured, glancing at her phone.
“I know,” he said.
They pushed deeper, checking spaces that made no sense to hide a person and then checking them again anyway. Kayne ran his hand along the walls, feeling for inconsistencies, hollow spots, temperature shifts, or anything that broke the illusion of solid permanence.
Still nothing.
Anja’s voice crackled softly in his ear. “Exterior’s clean so far. No obvious secondary access.”
So where the hell was he hiding Danica?
The timer dropped another minute.
Kayne stopped near the center of the gym, slowly turning, letting his instincts roam without logic getting in the way. He’d learned to trust that quiet pull in his chest, the one that didn’t explain itself or ask permission.
“Chloe,” he said quietly.
She was already watching him. “What?”
“Knowing the original owners, we have to assume this place was built to hide things,” he said.
“Yes, but we know there isn’t a basement,” she said.
Kayne stared at the floor beneath their feet, polished and perfect and lying like hell.
“Doesn’t mean there isn’t something else,” he said.
The timer kept ticking off seconds. Somewhere nearby, the building gave a soft, almost imperceptible sound, as if something shifted under pressure, settling into place.
Kayne’s hand closed around Chloe’s wrist, steady and sure. “Stay with me,” he said.
It was a command born of fear and certainty in equal measure.
Whatever waited beneath them, he intended to meet it head-on, without blinking.
#
Monsters rarely used the front door.
That thought flashed through Anja’s head as she and Leo moved along the exterior of the gym with quiet efficiency, their footsteps muted, their flashlights kept low.
The building sat too cleanly on the lot with new signage, fresh paint, and glass that gleamed under the streetlights.
It looked respectable and harmless. Parents would drop off their kids without a second thought, never questioning what lay beneath.
That was always the trick. Make it ordinary. Make it safe.
Which was exactly why her skin crawled.
“People who traffic children don’t improvise,” Anja said quietly, scanning the foundation line. “They plan. They build systems.”
Leo nodded, jaw tight. “They wouldn’t risk cameras and certainly no witnesses.”
“Or daylight.”
She crouched near the back corner, running her light along the concrete. There were no obvious access points, cellar doors, or exterior stairwells. If there was a way in, it wasn’t here.
That didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Absence, she’d learned, was rarely an accident.
Her thoughts slid uninvited to case files she wished she could forget. Homes with fake walls. Businesses with back rooms that didn’t show up on blueprints. Respectable facades that hid hell underneath fluorescent lighting, smiling while they swallowed people whole.
“This place used to be owned by villains who hid kids under people’s feet,” she murmured. “There’s a way in. It’s just not obvious.”
Leo exhaled sharply. “So where do we look?”
Anja straightened and pulled out her phone. “We think laterally.”
She dialed Tyler, hating that she would wake him up but doing so anyway. She paced as the call connected. “I need you to run a property search on the former owners of this gym. Everything from shell companies, to LLCs, to adjacent properties, anything that changed hands quietly.”
“On it,” Tyler said without hesitation. “Give me two minutes.”
She hung up and scanned the surrounding block with fresh eyes. Businesses were closed for the night. There was a vacant storefront, a nail salon, and a small auto shop with a for sale sign leaning crookedly in the window, as if it had been forgotten on purpose. Forgotten things were her specialty.
Her instincts sharpened.
Vehicles came and went. Nobody questioned grease stains or late-night access. Nobody blinked at trucks pulling in after hours, at doors opening when they shouldn’t.
The phone buzzed.
“Got something,” Tyler said. “They owned another property close by. Auto business. Different name, same financial trail. It was listed for sale six months ago, the same time the gym hit the market.”
Anja closed her eyes briefly. “Of course it did.”
Leo followed her gaze. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Drain pits,” she said. “Below-grade access. Easy to conceal and modify.”
They crossed the short distance without another word.
The business was dark, the interior lit only by streetlights bleeding through dusty windows. Anja jimmied the door quickly. There was no alarm and no resistance. That made her think that someone had been coming and going recently.
Inside, the air smelled of oil and old metal. She swept the space methodically until her light caught the pit. Long, narrow, and recessed into the concrete floor where mechanics would normally stand to drain oil out of engines.
She dropped down carefully, boots landing with a dull echo.
“Anja,” Leo warned softly.
“I’m good,” she said, though her pulse had kicked up. She ran her light along the pit walls.
There.
A slight, open seam that shouldn’t exist. A panel disguised beneath grime and shadow. She pressed, and it opened easily, revealing a narrow passage sloping downward, swallowed by darkness. The air that drifted up was cooler. Stale.
Leo was beside her as she activated her comm device. “Kayne, we found another entrance. Auto shop down the street. Hidden passage under the drain pit. It leads toward the gym.”
“I’m on my way.”
She glanced at the tunnel again, mouth firm. Pieces were aligning with sickening clarity. They hadn’t taken Danica into the gym.
They’d taken her under it.