Page 53 of Freeing Souls

“Run, rabbits, run,” Ryker sings while grinning maniacally. He hasn’t even pulled out a gun yet; he has been using his hands to take down the guards. Grayson, Ryker, Noah, and I work our way through the main floor, but when we don’t find anyone besides men working and our guys taking them down, we head downstairs to the basement.

“This way,” Vance calls from the end of a long hallway. “My men are finishing checking for any other guards or buyers. We found girls, though.”

The first room we enter has a few more dead men and then a large cage in the corner with four girls inside it. Ryker growls softly and moves to leave, but Grayson stops him. “Stop. If she knew we saw these terrified girls and moved past them, she would be angry.”

Her. Harley.We still don’t know where she is. Sighing, knowing Grayson is right, I walk up to the cage and help Vance get it open and help the hesitant girls out. As the last one, who is trembling and keeping her head lowered, steps forward, my eyes widen.

I must make a noise at the back of my throat, because she snaps her head up, and I hear Grayson let out a gasp behind me. “Tabby?”

Even through the terror clearly coursing through her, she narrows her eyes at us. “It’s okay. I promise, we are only here to help,” Grayson tells her.

She steps out of the cage but plasters her back to the wall, keeping all of us in her line of sight. Noah walks into the room from where he was speaking to someone in the hall and hisses before glancing at us. “Come on, guys. Let Vance get these ones.”

Vance looks around with narrowed brows but still nods. “There're more rooms with people.”

The next room holds more girls, some who look like they can’t be more than fourteen or fifteen. The fear in their eyes makes an ache settle in my chest, knowing we don’t know what has happened to Harley for the last forty-two days.

As we go into the third room, we find two more girls, and Grayson immediately speaks through his ear piece. “Nerds, we have her. She’s okay.”

Oakley’s eyes widen, and her lip wobbles as she steps forward hesitantly. Grayson being Grayson, he opens his arms, and she immediately seeks comfort in them. “I did it. I did it. I didn’t use. I spit it out. I did it. I did it.” She keeps repeating the phrase over and over as Grayson comforts her and tells her she did amazing.

“Check the next room. I’ll stay with Oakley,” Grayson tells us.

Ryker and I move to the next door, and before we open it, he grabs my arm. “If she isn’t in there—”

“I know, brother.”

We walk in and scan the room, both of us not even having the energy to be angry as we find the room empty.

“Guys!” Grayson calls, and we both run out of the room towards him.

Oakley, who looks much calmer now, frantically begins talking. “I heard some of them talking about another girl. She wasn’t in the van with them. Maybe that was Harley? Maybe whoever has her didn’t bring her?”

“Can you track the vans?” Ryker asks Grayson. He nods, and we all run back upstairs as Grayson starts talking to Nerds through the ear piece. As we get outside, he reads off the license plate numbers of each van.

“I can’t do this another day, Cade,” Ryker whispers brokenly as he faces away from me, trying to hide the fear and heartbreak I know is showing on his face. His mask is falling.

I don’t tell him he can. I don’t say we have to. Because the truth is, I can’t either. I can’t even pretend to, because the more time that goes by, the more I feel someone pulling my soul from my chest and burning it to ash.

Ryker

As the truck speeds down the open roads towards a small town in Virginia where the van that is owned by a guy Sugar remembered from the old days of the club, my heart pounds against my chest.

She’s there. She’s there. If I just keep telling myself that, I won’t feel like I want to end it all if she isn’t. This is enough. I don’t want to do this anymore. The unknown is killing me day by day. The fear of someone I have seen as a father and my soulmate being gone makes me want to blackout in rage.

Bikes and trucks from everyone at the SOS club race with us as we get closer and closer. “What if–” Grayson begins, but I cut him off, knowing what he was going to say.

“No. We don’t go through everything we have been through to just lose our soul like this. This is not the end. It’s fucking not,” I seethe.

It can’t be the end.

As we pull up to a large two story home, I leap out of the truck and fire at the men standing outside. As they fall to the ground, I can feel my pulse race faster and faster.

Going inside, Sugar calls for us all to split up. Noah, Gray, Cade, and I all run down the stairs to the basement, where we don’t find anyone standing guard and begin kicking down the doors.

Come on, little flame. Where are you?

Lifting my foot, I kick open the next door, and time stops.

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