I kind of figured that was what we were doing, but wasn’t going to say so. We crept closer to the walls, rather than stand in front of the ajar doorway, protecting ourselves from anyone who might start shooting from inside the building. We all had our weapons drawn.
Isaac lifted a finger again. We were all pressed up against the wall, then he stepped forward, weapon raised as he stepped into the open doorway. I heard his reaction before I saw the cause of it.
“Ah, shit.”
No shots were fired, so I followed him in. Lorcan and Clay moved with me, flanking my shoulders. Kingsley and Alex brought up the rear. We were all inside when I saw what had caused Isaac’s reaction. My stomach turned. On the floor lay a man sprawled facedown. A smear of blood stood out starkly against the white of the stone floor.
The words escaped my mouth, even though I was pointing out the obvious. “He’s been shot.”
Isaac looked over his shoulder toward me, his eyebrows pulled down in a frown of concern. “Yes, but who by?”
Kingsley’s expression matched Isaac’s. “That’s what we need to worry about.”
A new level of tension infected the group. I felt it radiating from each of the men. My body vibrated with nerves, and my stomach churned. My mouth ran so dry my tongue felt fat, but I forced myself to lick my lips and swallow hard, trying to push down my anxiety. Together, we left the body and moved in deeper.
Only a little farther on, we found two more men, also dead, in much the same position as the first. An unnerving certainty was creeping through me.
“You think they turned on each other?” I asked, keeping my voice low and still hoping the worst thing possible might not have happened.
Clay lifted his eyebrows at me. “That’s pretty damned unlikely, don’t you think?”
“So what do you think happened?” I stared at him, willing him to say something that didn’t include the man I hated most.
Clay didn’t grant my wishes. “That Hollan got here before us.”
Chapter Five
Clay’s words sank into our small group, and Isaac’s lips thinned. “I’d hoped we weren’t going to have to consider that.”
Shit.
Alex stepped in. “You think they might still be here?”
Isaac’s gaze shifted to the tall, blond doctor. “I want to say no, but we need to stay vigilant. They might have heard the chopper landing and decided to lay low until they’d figured out how many we were and what resources we had.”
Alex nodded. “Agreed.”
The entrance hall divided off in two directions, left and right. In front of us was a door. A small glass window in the door revealed the stairwell beyond.
“We should split up.” Kingsley jerked his chin toward the door. “We’ll cover more ground that way. I’ll take the stairs with Darcy. Isaac and Alex, head left. Clay and Lorcan, you guys go right. We’ll reconvene here. Any sign of trouble, fire a shot into the air, and the rest of us will come running.”
I was touched that Kingsley chose for me to be the one he partnered with, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was simply that he was the biggest, and I was the smallest, so he was evening things out a little. But I preferred to think he wanted to protect me. I had to admit, as I pressed close to him as we pushed through the doors and into the stairwell, I did feel comforted having his big presence beside me. Lorcan was the weapons guy, and probably knew how to shoot better than anyone, but there was something primal about having Kingsley’s bulk sheltering me.
He paused in the stairwell. “Up or down?”
My lips twisted. “Down.”
He nodded, and we got moving again. I covered him from behind as we made our way down the stairs, into the basement of the building. Halfway down, a fourth body lay slumped across the stairs, as though he’d been running and was shot from behind, sending him flying down the remaining steps. The thought caused a shudder to wrack through me, and I whipped my head back around, making sure the staircase was still empty.
So far, other than the dead men, I hadn’t seen anything that made me think this was a base like the one we’d left.
“Could we be in the wrong place?” I hissed to Kingsley. If we were, maybe Hollan had found the wrong place too, and killed everyone, assuming it was one of the bases. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I’d be happy if the base remained undiscovered by Hollan, but I didn’t like the thought that innocent people had died.
Kingsley nudged something with his foot. “Only if energy workers go around armed,” he replied.
I looked down. The thing he’d nudged was a gun. “Let’s keep going.”
A second set of doors met us at the bottom of the staircase. Kingsley positioned himself on one side of them and nodded for me to stand on the other. I held my gun, ready to start shooting if needed.
Kingsley stepped out and kicked open the doors. They revealed a second corridor beyond, but the space was empty. He stepped through, and I followed. On the wall, a security lock had been disarmed.
We continued. Numerous doors led off the hallway. The first door we tried led onto a room filled with computers and monitors, all destroyed, pieces of glass and plastic all over the floor. Chairs had been toppled, and screens smashed. There were another couple of bodies, too, slumped at their desks, bullet holes in the backs of their heads.
Nausea swelled up inside me. This was exactly what I’d been frightened of. That Hollan would come here, and they wouldn’t be prepared in the slightest. Hollan’s men had taken them by surprise and killed them all.
“Where are the boys?” I asked Kingsley, my voice coming out choked. This place was a training site, just like our base, and there would be the chosen boys here that they were training.
Kingsley wouldn’t meet my eye and shook his head, his nostrils flaring, his full lips pressing together. “I don’t know.”
I knew what he was thinking—that they were dead, too.
I covered my face with the hand not holding the gun. “Oh, God.”
“Go back upstairs,” he told me. “Find the others and tell them what we’ve found. It looks like Hollan’s men have done what they intended and are long gone.”
But I shook my head. “No, I’m staying.”
I knew Kingsley was trying to protect me from what we might find, but I didn’t deserve protecting. I’d been partially responsible for Hollan getting away with the memory stick. I was responsible for what had happened here. I wasn’t going to turn away from it now. Still, the thought of coming across the bodies of the boys made my stomach crawl into my throat. I pictured all the boys back at the base, and imagined finding them in the same way, and tears pricked the backs of my eyes. This was what we were fighting.
My legs felt weak, but I pushed on, following Kingsley’s back as we moved from room to room. We discovered a setup much like the one we had, only on one level rather than several. We walked down the corridor, checking each doorway. Every muscle in my body was so tense, the ache spread through my neck and shoulders. My fingers wanted to tremble around the grip of my gun, but I held on tight to stop them.
Through a set of swinging double doors, we found an industrial kitchen with a dining hall leading off of it. But there were no bodies of children, and nothing that gave us any clue as to what had happened here, so we moved on.
Another door led to the sleeping quarters. Unlike our base, where we had our own rooms, this layout was done in the form of dormitories. Bunk beds were positioned against each wall, the rooms providing accommodation for at least six people. I wondered how many lived down here. I had assumed it would be the same size as our base, but, now I was here, I could see it was smaller. These rooms had clearly been lived in. Clothes were piled on top of one of the beds. A book sat beside another. CDs had been stacked on the floor. My initial hopes that maybe they were no longer training in this base vanished. I didn’t know where the bodies of the boys were, but this setup definitely made it look as though they’d been down here.
We sho
ok our heads and shrugged at each other, both equally baffled.
“Where are they?” I asked Kingsley.
His brow furrowed. “Could they all be adults now? Maybe this base hadn’t taken on any new recruits for a while.”
“There must be a way to find out. Paperwork, perhaps?”
“Yeah, maybe. Perhaps the others have found something.”
A sudden metal clang made us both stand to attention. We exchanged a glance. What was that? The other guys making their way down here? But it didn’t sound like feet. It sounded like something metal had been knocked over in the kitchen.
We broke into a run, heading back toward the noise.
Kingsley glanced back at me. “It came from the kitchen.”
Double swinging doors led onto the kitchen—a large space of mainly white tiles and stainless steel. A steel island was in the center of the room, creating extra work space and offering storage with cupboards, also in stainless steel, below. We paused outside the doors, ready with our guns, Kingsley leading the way. He counted us in silently, lifting his fingers... one, two, three.
At three, we burst through the double doors, weapons aimed. My gaze searched the space, trying to see where the sound had come from. Things didn’t fall over by themselves.
A muffled sob filtered to my ears.
Kingsley and I exchanged a confused glance.
Instinct told me that whoever had made the sound wasn’t someone we were going to need to use guns against.
I lowered my weapon.
“Hello?” I called softly. “Is someone there?”
No one answered, but from somewhere behind the central island, there came a sniff. We’d checked behind there when we’d done our first round.
I frowned, stepping forward. Kingsley did the same, taking the opposite direction, so we covered the island from both sides. We both stepped out into the gap between the island and the rear counters, but the space was clear. I frowned up at Kingsley, but then I heard it again, the faintest hitch of breath. I placed my fingers to my lips then pointed at one of the closed cupboard doors. The cupboards were the same height as the counter, and easily big enough to hide a child.
“We know you’re in there,” I said, keeping my voice gentle. “It’s okay. We’re friends. You can come out now. We’re not going to hurt you.”
I didn’t know how much the person hiding inside the stainless steel cupboard had seen, but it was enough to make him continue to hide, despite us saying we were friends. I guessed he had no way of knowing. Maybe Hollan had said the same thing when he was trying to coax them all into the open. I gritted my teeth as a sudden surge of anger rose inside of me. That son of a bitch.
With no other choice, I reached out and took the handle and pulled it open.
A small bundle charged at me with a roar of fury and something held in his hand. Thank God, I managed to restrain my instinct to shoot, and instead lifted the gun up to block the blow. But something else happened in the madness. The whirling dervish trying to attack me was suddenly pulled backward. I was able to put my senses back together again.
The person who’d come flying out of the cupboard looked to be a boy of about seven years old. The thing he held in his hands was a rolling pin. Kingsley now held him around the waist, and he reached out and plucked the rolling pin from the boy’s hands and threw it to the side. The pin hit the floor with a loud clatter and rolled a couple of times before coming to a halt. The boy wiggled and squirmed, but he was no match for Kingsley.
“Hey, quit it, kid. We’re your friends, I swear.”
I nodded, trying to catch the boy’s eye. “We’ve come from a place like this one. What’s your name?”
“George,” the boy muttered, continuing to throw his shoulders back and forth to dislodge Kingsley.
“What happened here, George?” he asked.
George seemed to realize we weren’t trying to hurt him and shook his head. “I don’t know. The alarms went off, and then there was lots of shouting and gunshots. I know I should have helped, but then I saw Mitchell on the floor, and he was dead—”
The boy’s voice broke, and he slumped in Kingsley’s arms. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and Kingsley relaxed his grip, lowering to a crouch to bring himself more level with the child.
“Who’s Mitchell?” he asked. “One of the other boys?”
George shook his head then sniffed and wiped his sleeve across his nose, leaving a thin trail of silver across the blue material. “No, he was one of our trainers.”
“Where are all the other boys?” I asked. “The ones you were training with? Are they hiding, too?”
He shook his head. “No, they’re gone.”
“Gone where?”
He looked up at us, his blue eyes wide and appearing too large in his small face. “The people who came here—the ones with the guns—they took them.”
Chapter Six
The heavy footfall of multiple men running down the corridor toward us drew our eyes toward the entrance. My heart jackknifed in my chest. Kingsley stood again and aimed his gun toward the double doors, and George cowered behind him.
The door pushed open, revealing the other guys. Isaac, Alex, Lorcan, and Clay.
“Hey, there you are,” said Clay, taking a couple of swaggered steps toward us. Then he spotted George and stopped. “Who’s this?”
“George,” I said. “He’s the only one left of the boys.”
Horror passed across each of the men’s faces, and I realized what I’d said. “No, they’re not dead.” At least, I hoped they weren’t. “George says Hollan’s men took them.”
Isaac frowned. “Took them? Why would he do that?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” My mind whirled. Why the hell would Hollan take the boys? What was he planning on doing with them? I assumed it would be nothing good.
“How many other boys were down here with you?” Isaac asked George.
“There’s five of us. Me, Tad—who is only six—and Xander, who is eleven. Then there’s Scott, who’s the same age as Xander, and Chris, who is twelve.”
I felt the guys glance between them. I knew what they were thinking. The five boys were just like they’d been years ago when they’d been doing their training. It must be hard for them not to put themselves in the boys’ places. My heart ached at the thought of those four boys being dragged out of here by armed men, most likely being forced to step over the bodies of the men who’d trained and raised them for the majority of their lives. They would be terrified, and despite what training they may have been given so far, it would mean nothing against Hollan’s men.
Where were they now? Where would Hollan have taken them? Back to D.C.? I found it hard to imagine. Was this his way of punishing us somehow? Was he going to use the boys against us?
Again, the uncomfortable gnawing feeling gnashed its teeth in my gut. I’d said to Devlin that I felt things had gotten too personal between me and Hollan, and that even though he wanted to destroy the training bases, he would want to get his own back on me as well. I prayed this wasn’t going to be his way of doing it.
“How do we know where Hollan is going next?” Lorcan’s face was rigid with anger, his jaw locked. I knew this side of him now, the angry side, the side that made him dangerous, where he wanted to kill and break things. “Hell, he could already be there. He might be slaughtering another base right now while we’re standing around here talking.”
“Right,” Isaac said, taking charge. “We need to be methodical. This place has cameras, and yes, they would have been disarmed, but not initially. They might give us some idea of how many men Hollan brought with him, or even what kind of transport they’re using. If they’re traveling by car, that buys us more time. We need to get back to the control room and see what we can pull up.”
“A lot of it was smashed,” I said.
“Hopefully it was only the monitors. If the hard drives are intact, I’ll be able to attach my laptop, and we can view the surveillance
on there.”
It sounded like a plan, and at least it felt as though we might have something more to go on than just a stab in the dark.
“Keep your eyes peeled for anything that doesn’t look like it belongs here either,” Isaac continued. “Darcy, you come with me in case there’s anything that needs to be memorized. Alex and Lorcan, you go to each of the bodies and check them over. There’s a chance one or two of them might be Hollan’s men and were taken down first. Check their pockets for ID, or anything else that might help us. Clay, you go back to the chopper and tell them we’ll be leaving within the next fifteen minutes, and to be ready. We’ve probably already wasted too much time. Kingsley, you stay with the boy.”
Kingsley’s eyebrows lifted at the prospect of being put on babysitting duty, but he didn’t complain. Besides, the kid seemed to have taken a liking to him, and was sticking to the big man’s side. It didn’t look as though George would have gone with anyone else, even if Isaac had ordered it.
Together, we left the kitchen, and then separated again, Lorcan and Alex going to check the bodies over, while Clay went back to the helicopter.
“George,” Isaac said to the boy, “I know this is hard for you, but it’s really important that you tell us if you heard or saw anything that might give us a clue where those men took your friends. Can you think back, and try to remember if you saw anything important? You can look at the video on my computer soon, too, if I can upload the surveillance footage, and tell me if you know or recognize anything or anyone.”
The boy pressed his knuckles to his lips and nodded. “They said something about it being five miles away?”
“Who did?”
“The men who took the others. They said something about it being five miles—” He stopped himself and shook his head. “No, not five miles. Five hundred miles.”
Isaac and I exchanged a glance.
“We need to find out what transport they were in. We might be able to predict where they were going next if we can.”
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