Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The rain comes down in sheets, hammering against the windshield so hard the wipers can hardly keep up. When lightning strikes, it lights up the unkept backroads of Keytown then everything plummets right back into darkness.
I have one hand locked on the steering wheel while the other rests near the Glock tucked beside my thigh.
Cassidy sits in the passenger seat reserved, her attention drifting between the road ahead and the world sliding past outside her window.
Streetlights ended miles ago. Out here there’s nothing apart from stretches of wet road, overgrown brush, and the occasional rusted mailbox slanted over near the ditch line. The further we drive into Keytown, the more isolated everything becomes.
The kind of place a man, if you can call him that, would choose.
Thunder claps as I glance at my laptop mounted near the dash. Satellite images of the property flicker back from the screen.
It’s a huge lot with a dense tree line and one entry road leading from the main one.
The house itself is far back from the main road, secluded behind clusters of dead pines and collapsing fencing.
It’s old and run-down which makes it the perfect camouflage.
It’s a beige one-story, the siding has faded from years of heat, and the gutters that used to be white are now covered in grime.
The walkway leading to the front door is crushed gravel.
“They’re still there,” I tell her, eyes roaming over to the surveillance feed pulled from a traffic camera half a mile out. “No movement.”
Cassidy doesn’t answer.
Her attention stays fixed out the passenger window watching rain stream down the glass in disjointed trails.
The warehouse changed something in her tonight, I can feel it.
A few moments go by before she speaks.
“How many?”
“Five including him.”
“And they’re playing poker?”
“Looks like it.” I lock my hold on the wheel. “There are a couple of trucks outside. One motorcycle.”
Lightning flares in front of us.
For half a second Cassidy’s reflection appears in the window.
Blank expression with dead-looking eyes and rainwater silvering across her face under moonlight, still speckled with blood.
Then nightfall encompasses the car again.
My stomach caves inward because I know that look.
It’s the same expression she gets right before she stops seeing people as human.
The same look she had in the guest house and the same one she had standing inside that circus room.
“We get in,” she confirms coolly. “We end it fast.”
I scrunch my eyes together and squint over at her.
“Wherever you go, I go.”
Her eyes nonchalantly shift toward mine.
There’s nothing soft left in them tonight and the night isn’t over yet.
“What exactly do you think is going to happen when I see him?” She whips over to face me.
I exhale through my nose, trying not to deter from the mission.
Outside, the storm worsens, the road becoming shimmering rivers while the headlights sculpt through the night.
“I’m serious, Cassidy.”
“So am I.”
The words settle heavily between us and a dangerous kind of quiet follows.
Then the GPS marker blinks, signaling that we are half a mile away.
I ease off the accelerator, turning off the headlights as the house comes into view through the trees.
Obscured yellow light glows from the windows in the distance.
Music plays inside, entangled with the storm.
My mouth hardens into a grim line.
Somewhere inside that perishing house, monsterinyourcloset868 is sitting comfortably at a poker table after what we saw tonight.
After those cages, the girls, the livestream and the hideousness of it all.
Cassidy glides her hand easily through the duffel bag at her feet.
Metal scrapes against metal.
Another one of her favorite blades slipping free, a steel SRK, and for the first time since leaving the warehouse, she smiles.
Her eyes pin me in place, something devastating behind them before she whispers,
“Meet you at the graveyard.”
A chill moves through me as I hold her gaze.
“I’ll be there.”
The SUV rolls onto the muddy shoulder under a cluster of massive oak trees weighed down by rainwater and Spanish moss.
I shut off the engine.
Right away the storm dominates everything, the rain pounds on the roof and the wind whips through the branches in the trees.
Somewhere near the house a loose piece of metal clangs rhythmically in the storm like a warning bell.
Neither of us moves at first.
To the naked eye, without the vehicles parked out front, the place looks abandoned, not like someone’s home.
The house is roughly a hundred yards away, past a stretch of overgrown grass and rusted fencing.
The porch sags on one side and several windows are boarded over.
A junkyard of broken appliances, beer bottles, and rotting furniture litters the property.
But the windows glowing amber and open a fraction tells a different story, someone’s home.
Distant laughter is carried by the wind and trailed by stifled sounds of men arguing over cards. They are definitely intoxicated. Perfect. We are about to sober them up.
Cassidy glares venomously at the house without blinking, the knife rests loose in her hand. She’s been ready for this.
I open and search through the center console and pull out more ammo, reloading my Glock and twisting the suppressor.
Click.
Metal securing into place.
Cassidy looks over at me.
“Do you hear that?”
Another burst of laughter carries through the rain.
One of the men yells something unintelligible before more voices break out around the table.
The casualness of it feels wrong.
As if the man didn’t just facilitate a circus themed streaming of torture out of a warehouse holding women captive like it’s just another fucking hobby before poker night.
“Yeah,” I mutter darkly. “I hear it.”
Lightning strikes in the distance, basking the property in white light.
And that’s when I see them.
Two pit bulls chained near the side of the house adjacent to a rusted awning.
Both dogs immediately rise.
One begins barking and snarling furiously toward the trees.
“Shit.”
Cassidy’s attention snaps to them.
The second dog lunges against the chain, growling into the storm.
Lights inside the house alter.
Movement crosses one of the windows.
I grasp Cassidy’s arm before she can move.
“Wait.”
The barking intensifies.
One of the men inside shouts something as a chair scrapes noisily across the floor.
Then the front door swings open.
Warm yellow light pours out on the porch.
A huge man steps outside holding a beer bottle in one hand while shielding his eyes against the rain with the other.
He squints out into the darkness at the barking dogs.
My hand fastens around the gun.
Cassidy goes perfectly still, her leg brushing mine.
The man spits off the porch.
“Shut the fuck up!”
The dogs continue barking viciously at the tree line.
Toward us.
He starts down the porch steps lazily and clearly annoyed.
Rain drenches him as he stomps across the mud toward the dogs, muttering curses under his breath.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Cassidy wordlessly pulls another blade from her jacket.
I gravitate closer to her, voice barely audible in the storm.
“Let it play out.”
Her eyes stay locked on the man approaching through the rain.
The man reaches the dogs and wrenches one of the chains taut with a yank.
“What the hell’s wrong with you!”
Lightning ruptures in the sky.
Abruptly his eyes catch directly onto ours through the darkness.
A confused crease forms between his brows.
I don’t hesitate and aim my Glock and fire.
A muted gunshot dissipates into the storm.
The man devolves into the mud.
Before the body even hits the ground, Cassidy tears out of the tree line.
Rain lashes against her as she sprints across the property straight for the house, black boots splashing through mud while thunder shakes the sky overhead.
“Reap!”
Too late the pit bulls rupture into agitated barking beside the body.
Another porch light turns on and spills over more of the yard.
Voices inside rise immediately as a chair crashes over.
“What the fuck was that?” One of the men shouts.
Movement surges past the windows.
I take off after her, Glock raised as we cut through the storm to the porch.
The front door is thrown open again.
Another man comes out fast holding a handgun low near his thigh.
He barely has time to register Cassidy charging straight at him before she drives the blade into his throat, unrelentingly.
A strangled, wet sound tears from him.
Blood pours down the front of his shirt, mixing with rainwater while Cassidy rips the knife sideways with brutal force.
He collapses against the porch railing.
She shoves him off without losing speed.
His body crashes down the steps into the mud below.
“Holy shit!” someone screams inside.
Gunfire goes off through the doorway.
Wood splinters right next to us.
I clutch Cassidy around the waist and yank her sideways behind a rusted truck parked near the porch as another shot blasts through the rain.
“Three inside minimum,” I bite out at her, obviously upset but we’ve got to finish this right now.
Cassidy wipes rain and blood from her face with the back of her hand.
Her breathing isn’t distressed, it's focused. The carnage steadies her heartbeat now instead of raising it.
The front window suddenly shatters outward.
A man leans through it firing blindly into the storm.
I fire twice.
Repressed cracks.
The man vanishes backward instantaneously.
Inside the house someone starts yelling hysterically.
“He’s dead! He’s fucking dead!”
Another voice cuts through it.
“Get the back door!”
Monsterinyourcloset868.
I recognize the voice from the streams; a shiver runs down my spine.
Cassidy hears it too and her entire demeanor changes, her expression transforms into something murderous.
“There,” she announces coldly.
Then she bolts again before I can stop her.
“Reap!”
She flies up the porch steps through the open doorway while thunder booms and the rain falls harder.
I don’t even think, instinctively putting myself behind her.