Chapter Ten
Tessa
In retrospect, this might not have been my brightest idea.
The staging van reeked of gun oil and whatever onion laced sandwich the last person in here had chowed down on.
I was already inside, my back against the wall, when Kass yanked the door open.
I’d been surprised when no one had been in the van when I hid, but they’d all ridden in a different vehicle and parked a couple blocks away, if the chatter I’d heard from the driver and his passenger was any indication.
Kass paused when he saw me and just gaped for a second. I stared right back, refusing to move. Then Antonio rounded the back bumper, and his face went through a wild shuffle of emotions starting with furious. After that, I kind of quit keeping track. When he spoke to me, it was almost a growl.
“Tessa.” There might have been a warning to his growl but I didn’t let his displeasure sway me.
“Yep.”
“You told me you’d stay put.”
I didn’t look away. “Got me what I wanted.”
The tension in the van felt viscous. Behind him, Finch had gone statue-still. No doubt, he knew better than to weigh in. Hawk leaned against the wall, arms folded, gaze sliding anywhere but at us. Sully pretended real hard to focus on his phone.
“You gave me your word,” he said.
“I gave you what you needed to hear so you’d move.” I kept my voice even. “I meant to keep it. Then I thought about Mercy Raines and I knew I couldn’t.”
His jaw was tight enough to shatter. “If something happens to you in there --”
“Then something happens to me.” I met his eyes and didn’t flinch.
“But you have a much better chance of success if I’m with you.
Knight and I went over everything, but the possibility I missed something or misremembered something, I’ll know the second I see where we are.
” I paused, then added, “You know I’m right. ”
He looked at me for a long time. Long enough that Kass cleared his throat once, quietly. The muscle in Tonio’s jaw moved. He stepped back from the van door. “She stays with me. Every Goddamned step.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Oh, make no mistake, little girl. I could give a good Goddamn if you agree to that or not. If you try to take off on me, I will pull the Goddamned plug. I don’t care how many people I have to sacrifice, you will not be harmed in any way. Not even a Goddamned scratch.” He turned to Kass.
Nobody else said anything else about me being there.
Knight’s voice came through the earpiece Kass had given me a minute later, steady and low.
“Good to go, guys. Rourke’s badge is active.
First door will accept it for the next forty minutes before the system cycles.
After that, we’re relying on the biometric. ”
Rourke sat in the front passenger seat, sweating through his shirt. Two of Antonio’s men flanked him as he climbed out of the van. I had no doubt both men could and would take out the other man if Tonio gave the word. I wanted to spit in the guy’s face. Or slash his eyeballs.
Without further comment we all went out on foot, keeping to the shadow side of the block. The building ahead was dark at street level, the import business shuttered for the night, but I could see the amber glow leaking under the upstairs windows. Same as it always had.
Antonio walked at my right shoulder and slightly ahead of me the whole way.
It was a protective gesture I recognized he did occasionally.
He put himself in the best position to intercept anything coming at me.
I kind of felt bad about defying him, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to be here.
I gave them an advantage more than I hindered.
Rourke’s hands shook when he pulled the badge. He pressed it to the reader and the light went green and the lock clicked open, and for a half second none of us moved.
I pushed the door open and walked back into the place that had nearly broken me, except this time I walked in with a small army at my back, and I walked in by choice.
What I hadn’t prepared myself for was the visceral reaction I’d have to the scent of the place.
Cedar and the smell of new paper money made my stomach churn hard.
I had to swallow several times to keep from vomiting while I kept moving.
The zig-zagging corridor opened up past the second door and I paused.
I smelled something, underneath the cedar and the recirculated air.
Antiseptic and something sweet I couldn’t name but knew didn’t belong.
My body knew it before my brain caught up.
Then I moved, because stopping was not an option I’d given myself.
“Hard left past the third door,” I said quietly.
Finch nodded once and led the way. It wasn’t like he didn’t know where he was going or that he needed my approval.
I’d spoken mostly to myself. I needed to make sure the directions felt right in the actual setting.
I trusted my memory, but the fact remained that I’d been drugged some of the time.
While I prided myself on my near photographic memory, I wasn’t too proud to admit I could have made a mistake.
Thankfully, Finch seemed to realize my need for confirmation.
We hit the T-intersection and I turned toward the observation room. The one-way glass was set into the wall at eye level, dark on our side, and I knew what was behind it. I pressed close to the wall and looked through.
The main room was lit the way I remembered it.
The low amber light hid the bruises when they'd roughed us up to keep the merchandise looking unspoiled for the buyers.
Denton was still using the trick. Dark walnut furniture, the bar against the far wall, the dark partitions between the booths.
Two women waited in the room, both on their knees with their legs spread and their palms resting on their thighs.
Both of them had their heads down but I could see their slight quivering as they waited for whatever fresh hell came for them.
Again, I had to fight back a wave of nausea.
Denton stood near the center of the room.
He gestured toward the women like they were his property.
Which, since they were physically unable to leave on their own, I supposed they were.
Across from him, a thickset buyer with the casual confidence of someone who never gets denied, glass of amber liquid in hand. They were talking deals.
At the edge of the room, another man watched everything.
Broad-shouldered, dressed expensively but understated.
He stood stoic, military posture, graying close-cropped hair giving him some season.
The menace coming off him had nothing to do with his size or his clothes.
He had the same hard look some of the men in Kiss of Death had.
And Tonio. Without moving or speaking, he was easy to peg as the most dangerous man in the room.
"That's Rainman," Tonio whispered softly. "He's the one who set up the meet." The coldness radiating from Tonio was unmistakable.
“I don’t like this,” Kass muttered. “To have such wide-open rooms, this place feels claustrophobic. There’s too much going on at once.”
I knew how he felt. Much as I needed to be here, to help Mercy and all the other women and girls in this house of horrors, I wanted to be anywhere but this fucking club.
“Keep going,” I said softly. “There are more rooms just like this and the women aren’t always in as good a shape.”
“Christ.” Antonio swore, snagging my hand as we advanced behind Kass down the corridor. “We’re not leaving anyone in this place, Kass. The women go back to Haven until we know they have safe places to go. Everyone else dies.”
“You don’t have to fuckin’ tell me twice,” Kass growled.
That surprised me. I’d never heard Kass offer an opinion on anything.
Tonio or Seth gave an order, and Kass carried it out.
These men weren’t bad. They might not operate on the right side of the law, but they weren’t the monsters they’d been painted as.
At least, not to anyone who didn’t deserve the monsters.
We continued down the corridor, turning left, then right before we came to the last heavy steel door in the hallway.
Kass used some kind of gizmo to double-check the combination of the electronic lock against the numbers Rourke had given us.
The numbers must have checked out because Kass punched in the code and opened the door.
I blocked Antonio reflexively, one arm out, because three women in the room all pulled in on themselves but didn’t make a sound as we entered.
“It’s OK,” I said, holding my arms out to my sides. “We just want to help.”
Antonio signaled Kass and Finch, who stepped closer to the door to keep an eye on the corridor. Hawk and Sully poked their heads into the open doorway, but remained outside, likely conferring with Knight while they freed the other women we’d come across.
One woman lay on a cot. Her eyes were wide and fixed on me, not on the men behind me.
The other two women were younger. One lay curled on a second cot, her knees to her chest. The third sat on the floor with her back against the wall, her wrists zip-tied to a grate in the floor.
All of them had a hollow, stripped look.
I kept my voice low. “My name is Tessa. We’re here to get you out.” Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. “We’re taking you to Haven. It’s safe there.” I moved closer, slow, and knelt by the cot. “Can you walk?”
She nodded once. Her throat worked nervously.
“We need to hurry,” Finch told Antonio. He kept his voice low, but I knew he intended to remind me we didn’t have a lot of time.
Finch stepped forward slowly with a knife and cut the zip ties on the woman by the wall. The woman on the second cot hadn’t moved. I glanced at her, then back at the woman.
“What are your names?” I asked.
“She’s Casey. She won’t… They gave her something.”
“And you?” I wanted her to know her name mattered to us. She wasn’t just a number.