Chapter 40
Chapter forty
Halo
“Borrowed Time”
The door was open. Not cracked, not just unlocked. Wide open, drifting slightly from the wind like an invitation… or a goodbye.
For a moment, I just stood there. A single thought sank its claws into my chest before I could stop it: she ran.
Maybe she finally came to her senses. Maybe she realized what I really was, what being near me would cost her.
Maybe the time holed up in this room with nothing but her thoughts had broken something loose.
I’d given her the out. Hell, I’d practically begged her.
I told myself I wouldn’t blame her, but I still walked inside like a man checking a grave.
And that’s when I knew. She hadn’t run; she’d been taken. The motel room wasn’t abandoned; it was wrecked. The lamp was shattered, one of the chairs knocked on its side, the curtain hanging by a single hook…
And blood. A smear near the doorframe, more on the carpet. So much blood. Wounds, blood, bodily fluids, none of that had ever bothered me. But at the sight of the blood that might have been hers on the doorframe and the floor, I thought I was going to be sick.
Then I saw the knife. It was still on the floor where I’d thrown it the night before, but there was fresh blood on the edge. That told me she used it, she fought back.
At the base of the doorframe, nearly hidden in the shadows, was a small, pale curve of flesh and keratin. One of her fingernails had been torn off as she had fought. She’d clawed at the doorframe as they dragged her out, scraped herself bloody, buying seconds.
Waiting for me, and I wasn’t here.
I scanned the floor again. There were four sets of prints in the thin layer of dust and debris near the threshold. One small, barefoot, likely hers. The others were booted, heavy, and deliberate. Two were heavier than the other one.
“Fuck.”
I followed the trail through my own worst-case scenario.
No sign of forced entry. Did she open the door for them?
Why would she do that? Whoever it was had known I was gone.
They’d been watching, waiting. Probably knew our routines, might have even seen me leave.
My mind was calculating in real time. I had finished Brian off fast, needing only a few hours.
A few hours and I’d lost her. I backed up, trying to find the mistake, the thing I missed. There was only one person who knew we were here.
Rook.
I never trusted people like Rook. We were the type of people that didn’t work together with anyone, not really. We circled the same drain, traded favors but never names, never stories. But I hadn’t expected this betrayal.
I was already moving down the walkway before I had even made a decision about what I was going to do. I was on autopilot now.
The clerk was still behind the front desk. Harmless: mid-forties, balding, bored. He looked up when he saw me coming, and his smirk disappeared when I slammed my hands down on the counter.
“Has anyone been here today?”
He blinked. “Uh, what? No? Just—just you, man. You booked online…”
“I didn’t book shit. A friend did.”
He swallowed hard. “Y-yeah. Yeah, the guy with the leather jacket. Quiet. Paid cash.”
I leaned in. “I’m going to ask again. Did you see anyone else come here today? Anyone who looked like they didn’t belong?”
He shook his head too quickly. “No, I swear, man. Nobody. I haven’t seen anyone but you and your girl, and that guy who booked it. That’s it.”
“So the guy who booked the room was here today?”
“Yeah, yeah he was.”
“Alone?”
“No, he had two other guys with him.”
I stared at him. He wasn’t lying; he was terrified. If he’d been paid to keep quiet, he wasn’t tough enough to carry it. That just confirmed it.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping back.
He exhaled in relief too soon.
I grabbed the edge of the counter and flipped the whole thing over. It crashed, sending the register and his coffee flying. He jumped back, scrambling.
“Next time you see three men dragging a bleeding girl across your parking lot, call someone. If you’re here when I get back, I’m shooting both of your kneecaps.”
I turned and left without waiting for a response. I turned on my phone to start going down a list to try to figure out where Rook might have gone… and then I saw that the tracker on her burner phone was active. That genius fucking girl.
The gravel kicked up behind my tires as I peeled out, struggling to see out of my cracked windshield.
If she was still alive, that meant they were trying to draw me in. I refused to believe she wasn’t alive. That would serve no purpose. This wasn’t comforting, though, because that meant they weren’t going to kill her right away. They were going to make her suffer first.
By the time I found the warehouse, the sun had dropped low in the sky. The gate was chained, but the lock had been left unlatched. Sloppy. I killed the engine down the road and walked on foot. Every step was a countdown; every breath was borrowed time.
And if she was still breathing inside those walls, then the people who took her were already dead.
They just didn’t know it yet.
The warehouse sat like a carcass out here, like all of the places these people holed up.
Some slice of America abandoned long ago, then forgotten by anyone who gave a shit about permits or people.
Corrugated steel walls rusted in stripes, windows blacked out or busted. No signage, likely no working lights.
I didn’t see a guard posted outside, but I was sure they would have someone working the gate or patrolling.
I’d need to keep my eye out for him. If anyone else had been inside, anyone but Eden, I would have waited until I was sure I had taken out any guards or security…
but I couldn’t wait any longer. They’d had her long enough.
I circled wide, keeping to shadows and low fences, until I reached the east side of the warehouse.
There was an old loading dock, a half-collapsed concrete slab, cracked with age and neglect.
A busted ladder still clung to the wall, leading up to a catwalk that ran the perimeter inside.
The top panes of glass were long gone, replaced in certain areas with warped plywood and weathered tarps.
Perfect.
I scaled the ladder slowly, boots silent on the rusted rungs.
At the top, I crawled through a gap in the wall and onto the upper catwalk.
A skeletal steel platform ringed the inside, thirty feet up, partially obscured by old machinery and ducts.
From here, I could see most of the floor below through gaps in the steel grating.
There were three of them.
Rook was pacing in a wide arc near a row of crates. His arm was bandaged, stiff with dried blood. The two heavies were near the middle of the floor. They made him look tiny in comparison.
And she was between them. Alive, thank God, but…
battered and unconscious. She was tied to a metal chair with heavy zip ties at the wrists and ankles.
Blood had dried in thin, rust-colored rings around the plastic.
Her face was bruised, lip split with blood dried down her chin.
There was dried blood on her temple and on her arms, where she’d clearly fought like hell.
One of the larger men laughed at something Rook said. The other poured a bottle of water onto Eden’s head to rouse her. She flinched, coughing, blinking slowly.
I gripped the edge of the catwalk so firmly that my knuckles went white. Every part of me screamed to jump down and tear them apart with my bare hands. I couldn’t do that. They did this because they wanted me emotional and reckless. So I would have to give them nothing.
I backed away from the railing and crept along the catwalk until I reached a corner with a broken ventilation fan.
The housing was just wide enough to conceal me and offered a direct line of sight to the floor.
I unzipped the black nylon case strapped to my back.
My hands moved automatically, assembling the rifle with muscle memory and care.
Suppressed barrel, rangefinder, bipod clipped to the frame.
I knew this rifle like an extension of my own body.
I lay flat, keeping low behind the metal sheeting.
Scoped in until Rook’s face filled the lens.
He was smirking. I moved the scope, checking her again.
Her breath was shallow, but steady. She was still fighting, even half-conscious.
That hollowed something out of me when I saw her persistent defiance.
“Good girl, just stay with me… just a little longer,” I whispered.
I adjusted for wind, for distance, for every goddamn variable. Because when I pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t just be about ending them. It would be about saving her. If I wasn’t fast enough, if I botched it, if I made the wrong move, they’d kill her before I could reach the ground.
But if I was fast enough, clean enough, I could take all three down before any of them touched her again. I waited, breathing in time with hers, heart steady, crosshairs level. The moment would come, and when it did, I would paint this floor with their blood.
I adjusted the scope again, sweeping across the floor. One of the bigger men had his hand on a gun at his side, and he was just out of sight. I gritted my teeth, willing him to step out into the open, where I could get a clean shot.
Rook walked into frame, cradling his bandaged arm like a child. He leaned in close, his face inches from hers.
“You know,” he said, mock sympathy in his voice, “you didn’t have to make this so difficult. Fiery little bitch.”
She didn’t respond, didn’t even flinch, and that just pissed him off.
Rook straightened and backhanded her, the sound sharp and wet. Her head snapped to the side, blood spattering from her mouth onto the floor. I twitched behind the scope and nearly pulled the trigger.
No, not yet.
The heavy one that I couldn’t fully see chuckled, the sound echoing in the room. “I gotta admit, when we heard Halo had a girl, I figured you’d just be eye candy… but you got teeth.”
The other large man started circling her, and I noted the limp in his step, the wound on his leg that he had wrapped in a soaking bandage over his pants.
He was dragging the end of a metal crowbar along the concrete.
It was scraping; it was a performance. He was trying to scare her.
I saw the sound make her shudder. He knelt beside her, grabbing a fistful of her hair to force her face up toward him.
He leaned in close, breath hot against her face.
He let go of her hair, only to jam the crowbar between her legs, just pressing it to her inner thigh.
Not hurting her, not yet. Just threatening. They wanted her fear.
My scope followed his hand, my finger tightened on the trigger. One move, I thought. One wrong move and I won’t be able to stop myself from putting a hole in his skull.
The man gave her a wink and stood, turning to Rook. “Think he’ll actually come for her?”
“I’m counting on it… Say, pretty thing, you ever seen a man die nice and slow? Because you will.” He leaned towards her. “You will. We’ll make you watch, and when he begs for your life, you’ll see what kind of man he really is.”
Eden spat in his face. He reeled back, enraged, wiping his nose and cheek. He clenched a fist at his side but didn’t lift it to hit her. Instead, he motioned to the man with the crowbar. “Give her mouth something else to do.”
The man unzipped his pants like it had been a command. He took a step towards her and then hesitated. “She’s going to bite me.”
“Break her jaw. You’ve got a fucking crowbar in your hand, dumbass.”
I saw Eden stiffen, freezing for the first time. I was already adjusting the angle of the scope, calculating. Someone outside the warehouse shouted something, faint and far off. The guard.
The man I couldn’t see spoke again. “Hey, I wanna get in on this too.”
He walked towards Eden, also working to unzip his pants as the man with the crowbar grabbed her by the hair. She let loose a feral snarl, still fighting them. Now the three men stood in the center of the room in clear sight, a triangle around her.