Page 126 of Knot Your Average Beta

Chapter 35: In which we blow shit up

The drive takes too fucking long. I watch the blinking dot of the abandoned medical building get closer and closer on my phone. Maddox is driving like a madman, weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off.

Under normal circumstances, I might have told him to slow the fuck down, but not here. Not now. I’m pretty sure he would rip my head off if I did.

The interior of the vehicle is thick with angry alpharomones, clinging to my nostrils, clogging my lungs and making it hard for me to breathe. My beta scent is pumping out of me, trying to soothe them, but it’s not even close to working because I’m just as worked up as they are. Angry. Terrified. Anxious.

“One minute,” I say into the tense car. Luca nods and radios to the other car, full of Falcone underlings ready and willing to do what needs to be done.

“Pull over here,” I say, tapping Maddox’s shoulder. His hands tighten on the wheel. He knows Sadie is still two blocks away from us, but he pulls over.

“How we gonna do this?” Logan asks. He has his medical bag at his feet. He already went through it, made sure everything he thought Sadie might need is near the top, readily accessible.

Based on what she told us this asshole did to her before, I’m pretty sure drugs to flush her system are at the top. Anything that might help to keep whatever ‘medication’ the psycho doctor has given her from taking.

Swift’s been quiet on the drive over, flipping a knife between his fingers as he focused on sending our girl as much reassurance as he could. Now he grins, all vicious teeth and violence. “We go in and get our girl back. Eviscerate anyone who stands in our way.”

“I like that plan,” Luca says, still looking shaky as hell. His normally tan skin is pale, and he has dark circles under his eyes, even though it’s only been hours since Sadie was taken from us, but feeling their bond snap has drained him, shaken him. His expression is just as vicious as Swift’s.

Maddox looks at me. “We got any idea how many guards there are?”

“Inside?” I shake my head. “No clue. Outside,” I pull up a schematic of the building and they all gather around it. “We got four sets of two guards at ground level. One on each side of the building. There’s also a watcher on the building opposite.” I made sure we stopped out of sight of him when we arrived.

“I’ll handle him,” Swift says, already fading away into the dark. Maddox lets him go.

“They aren’t exactly being subtle,” he murmurs. “Do we know if anyone else is inside besides Sadie?”

I know what he means. This is a lot of guards for just one person. So either they really need her for whatever fucked up thing they’re doing or there is more than just her inside being tested on. Again, I shake my head. “I don’t. I wish I did.”

I hate not being able to give them the information we need.

“Where’s the most likely place they’ll be keeping her?” Maddox asks. I shift the image on the screen. “Third floor, there’s a bunch of smaller bedroom sized rooms. Or the basement, where there’s a similar layout.”

“Fuck.” Maddox runs his fingers over his mouth. “No way to narrow it down?”

Again, I shake my head. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could do more.”

Our prime slaps his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Not your fault. You fucking found her. That’s the important part.” He shrugs, looking at the building farther down the street. “Besides, we’re going to kill all of them, anyway. It’ll take a little longer to find her, but we will. Luca and I will go high, Logan and Ethan go low. Swift will take our guys and be the distraction.”

Distraction is putting it kindly. I’m pretty sure Swift is going to rip through them like a fucking wrecking ball, killing indiscriminately. I think he stepped out of his workroom with about ten bombs nestled in a black backpack. Maddox pins all of us with a look. “Keep coms open at all times. When any of us find her, we say, immediately. Logan, if it’s us-”

“I’ll come running. Immediately.”

I nod. “And I’ll make sure he gets there.”

Our resident doctor pauses. “We don’t know what state she’ll be in when we find her. It’s likely that she’ll just be drugged, based on what they did to her before. But they might have done something… else.” He doesn’t want to say, and I kind of wish he would, because now my brain is swarming with images of what else they could have done to her. Fucking fuck. Logan swallows thickly. “If she’s injured, just be careful if you try to move her. We don’t want to make it worse.”

They both nod, grimly. Swift’s voice filters into our earpieces. “Come on, fuckers, we doing this?” He sounds far too excited about this, but then Swift has always enjoyed this part of being us. The mayhem and the bloodshed. “Fair warning,” he says as we move toward the building. “As soon as I know you have Cherrybomb out, I’m blowing that fucker up.”

“Of course you are,” Maddox murmurs, palming his gun. “Clear the way for us in two minutes, Swift.”

“On it.”

We move on silent feet down the street, pausing just out of sight. “Knock out the cameras,” Maddox murmurs. My finger’s already over the execute button. At the same moment I hit it, there’s a faint pop, too quiet to raise suspicion and then the thud of one body, then two, hitting the ground.

After a moment, Maddox motions us forward. Swift cleared the front entrance for us, and I know he’ll get the guards on the sides and back before entering the building with the killing team.

The door isn’t even fucking locked. We’re able to just slide right through. Maddox lifts his gun and shoots the two guards in the first room in the head, easy as can be. “Stairs are the door to the right and fifty feet down the hall,” I direct. The four of us take off in that direction.

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