“No, they didn’t. Tell me where you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine, it was just a lot of weight to fall on me when I couldn’t stop the fall. I’ll be fine—”

There was a loud banging coming from the metal door and I cringed into Trent’s chest. I felt his right arm go up and stay there as he waited for something to happen. But the chairs held under the handle, for now.

“You’re out, Trent! You’re out, you hear me? You will pay for every one of our brothers! I’ll fucking kill you, you son of a bitch!”

The screaming and pounding continued for countless minutes until it eventually slowed, and then stopped completely.

Trent and I sat there, gripping each other as we waited to see if it would start up again. When nothing happened for a long time, my eyes started drooping as the exhaustion set in. Trent gently removed me from his body and laid me down on the mattress before dropping to his side next to me, so his body was closest to the door, and pulled me into his chest.

“I’m sorry you had to kill them,” I murmured before I fell asleep.

His breathing suddenly halted, and the hand around my waist curled tighter. “I’d do it again if it meant keeping you away from them.”

I nodded into his chest and blew out a shaky breath. “I’m so glad you weren’t hurt, Trent. Thank you for protecting me. I don’t know how close you used to be with them . . . so just, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, Rachel. Just know that I’ll do whatever it takes for you.”

My chances of escaping were rapidly weakening, and it was hard to keep hope that I had a chance of getting out of here. But if by some miracle the department found me, I knew I would do whatever it took to keep them from hurting Trent or blaming him for this.

Trent

I WAS IN SO MUCH FUCKING PAIN, and all I wanted to do was sleep . . . but I knew I had to push through that. If the guys tried, they could easily hit the door hard enough that the chairs would start coming loose, and eventually give out. A part of me knew I would wake up if that happened, but I also felt like I was on the verge of passing out, and I was terrified I wouldn’t wake if that happened. Staying awake was the only option I had if I wanted to keep Rachel safe.

Unwrapping myself from her, I sat up on the small mattress and ran my right hand through my hair a few times. I thought about Carson and Jaime, Dominic, Eddie, and Miguel. Since I’d been with Romero Juarez and the rest of the brothers, I’d always been forced to end people’s lives. And every time after, I’d gotten physically sick. I could still see every single one of their faces clearly in my mind, like they were right in front of me. I still hated myself for what I had done. Regardless of acting under the pressure of Romero’s gun pointed at the back of my head, I was the one who had pulled the trigger and ended so many lives.

But with the five tonight, I felt absolutely nothing. I didn’t know if it had to do with the fact that I’d hated every minute of my forced life with those men, the pain that seemed to get worse with each passing minute, or if it just had everything to do with her.

I knew now, without a doubt, I would do anything for the girl asleep behind me.

I stayed silent as I listened to Rachel’s breathing. Making sure it was deep and even, I prayed to God she stayed asleep. Keeping low to the ground, I searched the dark room until I found a plastic bag. Trying to keep quiet, I grabbed the first shirt my hand touched and pulled it out. Once I got a small tear started in the material, I gritted my teeth and ripped the shirt open. The pain in my left arm exploded and I had to bite back a string of curses. Pulling in a ragged breath, I held it in as long as I could manage before attempting a silent rush out.

Once I was able to breathe somewhat normally again, I moved over a couple inches on the shirt, and repeated the same process until I had two thick, long strips of the cotton. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a tight enough tourniquet, but I had to try something. Tying them together on one end, and using my teeth and right hand, I wrapped the material around the entry wound and tied it off as tightly as I could above the bullet hole. I ground my jaw as the pain intensified, and sat still as I tried to calm my breathing, but it was so goddamn painful.

Moving so I could lie down on the mattress again, I stilled when a scraping noise accompanied my harsh breaths. Turning, I let my eyes slowly roam the dark floor until they fell on Rachel’s journal.

She never had told me what she was always writing about, and after we’d been interrupted the other night, I hadn’t asked again. If it were something trivial, she would have told me by now. But it had to be significant in her life, because all I could see was the way she had choked up when I’d given it to her.

Knowing that if she ever saw this journal again, I would already be gone from her life in one way or another, I felt around the floor until I found one of her pens. Sitting down on the mattress, I stared at the journal in my hands, trying to talk myself out of what I was about to do . . . but I needed to do this. I needed her to know.

Opening it up to the last page, I looked over my shoulder and took in Rachel’s sleeping form one last time before bringing the pen down to the paper.

15

Kash

WE HAD BEEN SITTING OUTSIDE THE BUILDING for nearly thirty-six hours—other than the few hours when we’d made appearances at the police department yesterday and today—and I was getting anxious. I had a feeling something bad was going to happen if we didn’t do something soon, and it was making me restless, and just pissing Mason off.

“I swear to God, if you don’t stop moving I will shoot you.”

“I’m telling you, Mase, something doesn’t feel right.”

He threw his hands up around him and whispered harshly, “It’s probably this fucking storm we’ve been sitting in for two days! We’re probably going to get struck by lightning or something.”

I stopped my pacing and my expression went blank as I turned to look at him. “Really, Mason? Really?”

“Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s now dark again and the power is still out in this neighborhood, and it’s creepy as shit.”

Sitting down with a grunt, I crossed my arms and stared at the building in front of us. “When we rescue Rachel, I’m going to tell her about how scared you were of the dark neighborhood as we scoped out the place. I’m sure she’ll get a kick out of it.”

“Fuck you, Kash. We should just get back in the truck.”

“We can’t see anything from the truck. The building is too far from the street.”

Mason grumbled but didn’t argue anymore. He knew I was right.

The power had been out when we’d gotten here early yesterday morning, and other than a handful of minutes of flickering on and off yesterday and today, it’d mostly stayed off. It had been pouring rain up until this afternoon, and the lightning and thunder had been insane yesterday. But it was already down to barely sprinkling, and Mason was just being a bitch. I wasn’t about to leave.

I knew Rachel was in that building. I could feel it. I could fucking taste it.

And I needed to pace some more before I took off running inside.

“Sit. Down,” Mason growled.

“Just keep watching to see if anyone comes out of that door. I’m going to go check around the building to see if anyone is using the other doors.”

“Kash . . .”

“Don’t start with me, Mason. I need to move or I’m going to go crazy. I won’t go in there without you, I don’t have a death wish.”

Grabbing two handguns and holstering them, I took off in the dark and tried to keep calm as I made a wide perimeter around the building. I strained to hear anything coming from inside, but there was nothing. And, unfortunately, with the power being out, I couldn’t see the activity with lights or electronics I normally would watch out for.

The quiet and darkness continued to put doubt in my mind that anyone was there. That we would go in and it would be empty, just as the first house had been. But something was telling me Rachel was in there, and I couldn’t ignore that. I also could not get past this fucking stupid bad feeling. It hadn’t been there yesterday, it just randomly started this morning and had steadily gotten worse as the day had progressed.

As soon as I finished walking the perimeter, I turned and went around the other way, making a wider berth and weaving in and out of other buildings around. I looked for buildings that were abandoned, and when I finally found one, forced my way inside. It had the same setup as the one we were watching, a few doors of entry, but there was practically nothing inside.

I made my way past remains of a squatter camp and rodent nests, and walked straight to a random room standing in the middle of the massive space. As I got closer, I withdrew one of my guns and turned on the mounted-on flashlight. I kicked back the door that was barely hanging on its hinges and flashed the light down the steps. Taking a deep breath, I walked down and stopped when I hit another door. Mason is going to kill me when he finds out I cleared a building alone. Preparing for anything, and hoping for nothing, I grabbed the knob and shoved the door open.

“What the fuck?”

As soon as I was out of the building, I quickly made my way back to where Mason was sitting and dropped down on the ground next to him.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I found a building that’s set up the same as this one. There was nothing upstairs except for these four walls pretty close to the main door. At first I thought it was a room, but it just held stairs that led to a basement. Down there, there are no doors to get in or out, except for the stairs. This basement was as empty as the upstairs, but these guys live here, and it’s Juarez’s main house. So I know they had to have done a lot of construction inside. But I’m betting they have the housing downstairs.”