It’s going to be fine. We have the element of surprise.
I tell myself that over and over again as Levi drops down into a crouch and moves over to the little crack in the paneling to peer inside the building.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,” he starts, and it takes me a second to realize he’s counting how many others are in the room.
Fuck. That’s so many. They outnumber us almost two to one.
Levi makes a quiet noise in his throat. “I see Alex.”
A brief feeling of relief washes over me at that. At least he’s here, and apparently alive. I’m pretty sure Levi would have said something if he were dead.
“Let’s go around back,” Sloan murmurs, and he gestures for us to go ahead of him. We move as quietly as we can, creeping around the building as we look for a back door.
Of course there is one. This building looks like some kind of abandoned retail space, one of those that usually holds two or three different businesses with offices on top, and there’s a back door near the dumpster, probably so the former employees could take the trash out.
The door is locked when Levi tries it, which isn’t a surprise, and before I can ask what the plan is for getting inside, Rory has his gun out. He fits something to the barrel of it, and I recognize it as a silencer. So they won’t be able to hear us coming.
He aims for the back door, finding the lock and shooting it out with nothing more than the ping of metal on metal. Levi moves in beside him quickly, and they kick the door in with sharp movements.
That’s the last thing I really have time to process before the shit hits the fan.
The Jackals aren’t stupid, even if they did steal from the Black Roses, and there’s a man guarding the back door from the inside. We burst in so quickly that he barely has time to react, and Rory has his gun up in a second, aiming for him and shooting him right in the chest.
He’s the second person I’ve seen go down like a sack of potatoes, dead before he even hits the floor, and even if my dad wasn’t actually shot dead, the mental image is still there.
The man bleeds out on the tacky beige linoleum, and my heart races as I freeze there, watching him for a second. I grip my own gun tighter, trying to breathe through the sudden tide of fear and nausea.
This is definitely not the time to fall apart. Not when someone’s life is on the line. Just because I watched Rory shoot a man in front of me, I can’t go to pieces. It probably won’t be the last time, and before this is over, I might have to do the same thing. Better them than one of us, I guess. It would be ten times worse to see Levi or Rory or even Sloan in a crumpled heap on the ground, dead and bleeding out slowly.
So I take a deep breath and hurry to catch up with the guys, who have already started moving deeper into the building. It’s dark in the halls, but there’s a dim light shining from up ahead of us, giving away where the rest of them are gathered.
We keep our guns out and up, wary for any more Jackals who might be lurking or coming back from the bathroom or something.
But no one else comes out at us as we make our way down the hall and peer into the big, open room where they’re holding Alex.
As soon as I peek in, Alex screams, and I jump and nearly drop my gun on the floor.
Rory steadies me, and there’s a grim look on his face that lets me know he knows what’s happening here.
Alex is in a chair in the center of the room, right under a row of florescent lights. He’s shaking, and it looks like he’s half out of it from the way his head lolls around, moving from shoulder to shoulder.
His face is dirty, but there are clear tear tracks through the grime, and when he opens his eyes, they’re hazy with pain. There are darkening bruises on both sides of his face, and what looks like a nasty gash along one cheek. His shoulders are hunched, and he seems like if he wasn’t tied to the chair, he’d be in the fetal position already, curled up and trying to shrink away from the pain.
Two of the Jackals, one big and bulky and the other even bigger, stand on either side of him. They look to a man who seems to be in charge, and he nods, giving them the go-ahead to continue.
I want to look away, but I don’t. This is my fault. I did this to Alex, doomed a man I don’t even know to this pain, and hiding from it feels cowardly.
So I watch as the bigger guy winds up and then backhands Alex across the face, snapping his head to the side with a sound that echoes around us.
When the noise dies away, there’s just the sound of Alex’s labored breathing and small snuffling noises of pain.
“You’re going to tell us what we want to know,” the man in charge says with a grin. “Or we’ll send you back to the Black Roses in a garbage bag for your loyalty. I bet Gavin will love that.”
Sloan scowls at the mention of his dad, and I don’t blame him.
Alex shakes his head, but it’s slow, making it clear how dazed he is from that hit and probably whatever else they’ve been doing to him. I really don’t want to know.
I notice, though, that they have one of his hands splayed out on a tall wooden crate to the side. Or it would be splayed if most of the fingers weren’t bent and crumpled in unnatural ways. A hammer sits off to the side, and the sight of it turns my stomach.
They used it to break his fingers. Motherfuckers.
I don’t want to just stand there and watch while this man is tortured even worse, so I look to Sloan, hoping he plans to intervene soon.
His face has gone from the scowl to impassive again, and his eyes dart around the room, like he’s taking the lay of the land.
While watching Sloan, I miss the big guy hitting Alex again, and snap my eyes back to the scene when that sickening slap of skin hitting skin rings out with Alex’s cry of pain.
He’s groaning and gasping even louder now, and anger fills me, hot and impossible to ignore. They’re beating him like he’s worth nothing, treating him like nothing more than a bargaining chip to get some kind of leverage over on the Black Roses. Like he’s not even a fucking person.
Something shifts inside me, white-hot anger rising up in my chest, scorching my lungs.
Fuck these assholes. I’ll fucking kill them.
Suddenly, this mission isn’t about saving my own ass at all. It’s about atoning, making up for what I did to set all this in motion, and saving Alex.
We have to get him out of here.
The guys all seem to be on the same page as me. Levi and Sloan have moved to the other side of the doorway, leaving Rory and me on our side. Sloan makes eye contact with all of us and starts to count down with his fingers, beginning with three.
Levi and Rory are clearly familiar with this, nodding and getting themselves ready, and I catch on quickly enough to what’s about to happen. I readjust my grip on my gun and swallow hard, willing my anger and determination to take over and override the fear surging through me.
The count seems to go on forever, but Sloan eventually hits zero, and we burst into the room in a coordinated movement.
The Jackals are so focused on Alex and what they’re doing to him that they don’t notice us at first, allowing Sloan to get his gun up and start shooting before they can even react.
He manages to peg the bigger guy right in the arm, making him roar with pain and confusion. When he whips around to see what’s going on, Sloan fires again, dropping him like a brick to the ground.