21. Diesel
DIESEL
For the richest guy in the county, Pemberton’s home security is ridiculously easy to bypass—just a keypad with a code Sasha pried out of a contractor Sharon knows, some guy who did landscaping work out here two summers back and still remembers the numbers because Pemberton’s cheap enough to never change them.
Havoc stops at the keypad and punches it in, and the gate swings wide like it’s been waiting for us.
Cloud hides the moon tonight. Fine by me.
We cut engines at the treeline and walk the rest, bikes stashed where the gravel gives way to grass, hoodies up, balaclavas rolled down over our faces the second we clear the fence. No cheap latex horns tonight. Just black wool and five men.
One guard patrols the side yard near the pool house, flashlight beam cutting lazy circles through the dark like he’s already halfway to bored out of his mind.
Ryder takes him before the guy even registers movement—one arm locked around his throat, dragging him back into the shadow of a hedge before his boots finish scraping the flagstone.
Thirty seconds, maybe less. The guy goes slack, and Ryder zip-ties him to a drainpipe behind the pool equipment, gag stuffed in his mouth, flashlight clicked off and tucked in his own pocket.
“One down,” Ryder murmurs into the dark. “House might have more inside.”
“We’ll handle ’em as they come,” Havoc says.
The back door’s unlocked, because rich men who own half a county apparently never think anybody’s coming for them in their own house.
We move through a mudroom, then a kitchen big enough to feed the whole clubhouse, granite counters gleaming under one dim under-cabinet light nobody bothered to shut off.
No television. No voices. Just our feet on the floor.
We split up room by room—Ace and Ryder taking the east wing, Havoc and me clearing west, Riot posted near the main staircase where he can watch every direction at once.
I check closets, behind curtains, under a bed the size of my whole room, and every empty room makes my gut sit heavier than the last.
A study. A library that looks untouched. A bathroom with gold fixtures that’d make Bone’s eye twitch just thinking about the waste of money. Nothing. No sign of her anywhere on the main floor or the one above it.
“She’s not here,” Havoc says low, jaw tight enough that I can hear the tension in it even through the ski mask. “Penny’s hunch was wrong, or she’s already—”
Then I hear it.
Faint. Almost nothing. A whimper, high and thin, coming from somewhere below us, through the floor, muffled by God knows how many layers of expensive flooring and insulation.
Havoc goes still. I go still. Somewhere down the hall, Ace’s head turns too, like he caught it as well.
“Basement,” I say.
We find the basement door concealed behind a bookshelf in the study. Havoc yanks it open, and the stairs going down are lit soft, warm, deliberately cozy in a way that turns my stomach before I’ve even seen what’s waiting at the bottom.
We move fast now. No more stopping at every door. Whatever’s down here, we need eyes on it immediately.
The basement isn’t a wine cellar. It’s a room built to look like a little girl’s bedroom, pink walls, stuffed animals lined up on shelves, a canopy bed with lace trim, and none of it does anything to soften what’s actually happening in the middle of it.
Addison Miller stands beside the bed, frightened and silent. She doesn’t move when we come down the stairs.
Douglas Pemberton sits in a leather armchair six feet away in an open robe. The sight of us takes him by surprise.
Nobody in this room says anything for one full second, and it’s the longest second of my life.
“You sick fuck.”
The words come out of me before I even decide to say them, and Pemberton’s head snaps toward the stairs, mouth already opening on a shout that never makes it past his teeth.
Ryder crosses the room in three strides and slaps a hand over his mouth, then a gag, cinching it tight enough that Pemberton’s eyes bulge with the force of trying to scream through it anyway.
Havoc’s already moving toward Addison, and I watch something shift in his whole body—the President disappearing for a second, something fatherly coming in its place.
“Ace. Ryder.” His voice comes out steady, controlled. “Get her covered. Get her outside.”
Ace already has the blanket off the bed, wrapping it around Addison’s shoulders before Havoc finishes the sentence. Ryder crouches down to her eye level, mask still on, voice gone soft in a way I’ve genuinely never heard out of him before.
“Hey, sweetheart. We’re friends. We’re gonna get you home, okay?”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move much either, glassy-eyed in a way that makes my hands curl into fists at my sides, and Ace scoops her up like she weighs nothing, tucking her face against his shoulder, turning his whole body between her and the rest of this room like he can block out everything she’s already seen just by standing in the way.
They’re gone up the stairs within ten seconds.
I hear Ace’s voice, low, murmuring something I can’t make out, and then the basement door swings shut behind them, and it’s just me, Havoc, Riot, and a man who’s about to learn exactly what happens when somebody like us finds out what he’s been doing down here.
“Riot.” Havoc’s voice hasn’t changed pitch, hasn’t changed volume, and somehow that’s worse than if he’d been shouting. “Gun on him.”
Riot pulls his sidearm and levels it at Pemberton’s face without a flicker of hesitation, and something in the man’s eyes finally shows real fear, sweat breaking out along his hairline, robe still hanging loose around a body that’s about to stop existing.
Havoc crosses to him slowly. Crouches down until they’re eye level, and when he speaks, his voice drops quiet enough that I have to lean in to catch all of it.
“We’re gonna take that gag out,” he says. “You’re gonna talk. And every word you say better be true, because my Sergeant’s got a bullet with your name on it the second you decide otherwise.”
He nods to me. I pull the gag loose.
Pemberton sucks in a wheezing breath, and the first thing out of his mouth isn’t a denial—it’s a justification, which somehow makes my rage climb even higher than an outright lie would’ve.
“You don’t understand,” he babbles. “I never hurt them. Any of them. I dressed them up, played with them, like dolls… That’s all it ever was, just dolls, just—”
“Just dolls,” I repeat, flat, and my hand’s already itching for the pistol at my back.
“Yes! I never—I would never actually—” He stops. Something flickers across his face, guilt maybe, or just the calculation of a man realizing his usual excuses aren’t landing the way they always have with whatever lawyers and payoffs he’s used before.
“And her.” Havoc’s voice doesn’t rise, but something underneath it goes sharp enough to cut glass. “Addison. What’d you do different with her?”
Pemberton doesn’t answer right away. That silence tells me everything I don’t want confirmed out loud.
“She was—” He swallows. “She looked older. Acted older. I couldn’t—I treated her like a woman, not a child, I never meant—”
Havoc’s fist connects with his jaw before he finishes the sentence, and Pemberton’s head snaps sideways hard enough to crack against the leather chair.
I don’t hold back either. Whatever comes out of this man’s mouth over the next several minutes, I stop listening for the actual words after a certain point, because there’s nothing left to hear that isn’t confirmation of exactly what kind of monster’s been sitting in this basement for years while three separate families lied to their neighbors and called it relief.
My knuckles split open against his cheekbone.
Havoc’s boot finds his ribs. Riot never lowers the gun once, not even when Pemberton starts sobbing, not even when the sobbing turns into something closer to begging.
By the time we’re done, he can barely hold his own head up, and I already know—looking at what’s left of his face, hearing him admit he abused Addison—that there’s no version of this where he walks out of this basement breathing.
Some things a man doesn’t get to survive telling the truth about.
“Riot.” Havoc straightens, breathing hard, blood on his knuckles that isn’t his own. “Find the surveillance room. Wipe the cameras, but don’t touch the hard drives. We want people to find evidence against this asshole.”
“On it.” Riot disappears up the stairs without another word, and it’s just me, Havoc, and Pemberton slumped sideways in that chair, barely conscious, gag still hanging loose around his throat.
Havoc looks at me. I look at him.
“Dibs,” I say.
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t even blink. Just steps back, giving me the room, and something in his face says he understands exactly why I need this one, why I need it to be my hand and not his, not Ryder’s, not anybody else’s.
I pull my pistol. Pemberton’s eyes come up, unfocused, wet, and whatever’s left of him tries to form a word that never makes it out of his throat.
I don’t wait for it.
The shot echoes hard off the basement walls, and it’s done.
Quick. Cleaner than he deserves, if I’m being honest with myself, but we’ve got a little girl upstairs, and we need to be gone before sirens start climbing this hill, and there’s no time to make this last the way some ugly part of my gut wants it to.
We move fast after that. Up the stairs, through the study, back through the house we cleared coming in.
Two more guards materialize near the front entrance, drawn by the gunshot, and neither of them gets more than a hand toward their holsters before Havoc and I put them down.
No hesitation. Men who take a paycheck to guard a house where a six-year-old is held captive in a basement don’t get the benefit of any doubt from me tonight.
Outside, the night air hits different after that basement—colder, cleaner, like the whole world’s trying to remind me it still exists past what just happened underground.
Ace and Ryder are crouched near the treeline with Addison between them, and something’s shifted in her posture since I saw her last—shoulders less locked, one small hand gripping the sleeve of Ace’s hoodie like it’s the only solid thing left in her whole world.
Ryder’s saying something to her, low, and I catch the tail end of it as we jog up.
“—gonna call a real nice police lady,” he’s telling her. “She’s gonna come get you and take you home to your mom and dad. You just gotta wait right here with us a few more minutes, okay? Can you do that?”
Addison nods. Small. Barely there. But it’s a nod, and given where she was twenty minutes ago, I’ll take it as a win.
Havoc pulls a burner phone from his hoodie pocket, punches in three numbers, and holds it to his ear just long enough to say, “Addison Miller’s standing outside the Pemberton estate wrapped in a blanket,” before he hangs up and drops the phone into the grass, crushing it under his boot for good measure.
Riot jogs out from around the side of the house a minute later, breathing hard. “Surveillance room’s fried. Every drive, every backup. Nothing left to find.”
“Good.” Havoc crouches down in front of Addison, lifts the bottom of his mask enough for her to see his mouth, something human under all that black wool. “You’re safe now, sweetheart. The police are coming. You’re gonna be okay.”
Far off, faint but climbing fast, sirens start cutting through the quiet.
“Time to go,” Havoc says, standing.
Ace ruffles Addison’s hair once, careful, and Ryder gives her a small salute like she’s one of us now, some tiny brother-in-arms who survived something none of us will ever fully understand. She almost smiles at that. Almost.
We’re gone before the sirens crest the hill, cutting through the treeline on foot, bikes waiting exactly where we left them, engines quiet as we push them a quarter mile down the service road before anybody dares start them.
We take the back way out, circling wide through two counties’ worth of gravel roads and old logging trails, avoiding every stretch of highway that might catch us on a camera or in a passing headlight.
By the time we roll into the clubhouse lot, dawn’s just starting to gray out the horizon, and my hands have finally stopped shaking enough to cut the engine.