Page 105 of The Chemist

The teams carefully moved through the trees, trying to remain silent and conscious of any traps or dangers too difficult to see in the dark. Throughout the area, torches glowed as if the inhabitants wanted to allow for some light. Was it to provide for safety? Or add to the terror of traveling through the darkness at night?

Zero placed his hand on the trunk of a tree for support as he checked something stuck to the bottom of his boot. A twig. Annoyed, he pulled the offending object from the ridges of his sole, then tossed it to the side so that no one else would step on the offending object.

When he moved his hand, he felt a warm, sticky residue on his fingers. Holding up his hand to one of the nearby torches, he examined the foreign substance.

What the fuck?

Thick red blood stained his fingers and his palm.

“Everything okay?” Ares asked, stopping the row of men who followed him. He glanced over his shoulder with interest.

“I don’t know. It looks like blood,” Zero answered, holding his fingers closer to the light, struggling to get a better look.

Jared and Chase stepped up next to him, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look for themselves.

“Perhaps it’s animal blood?” Jared suggested, glancing over at Chase as he waited for confirmation.

Chase glanced up at Ares. “We need to keep moving. Now.”

Jared’s face said it all. He didn’t like the concern in Chase’s voice.

Nodding, Ares rounded up the troops once again and continued their march toward the research facility that was supposedly holding their friend captive.

What was Chase not saying?Chase had worked several years with the Toronto police force in Canada, so when something got him worried, Zero knew it was something serious.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at a large concrete structure surrounded by a chain-link fence. A sign attached to the fence read “high voltage.”

Zero’s stomach sank.How were they going to get around this little snag in their way?

“I’m on it.” Marc hurried to a junction box hidden behind some bushes and began playing around with the wiring. Next, he pulled out his tablet and began entering codes and strings of information Zero had no chance in hell of ever understanding.

“We’re in,” Marc whispered, shoving his tablet back inside his satchel, then joining Chase and the others near an opening in the fence they were making.

Silently, they squeezed through the cut fencing and moved across the grass, being careful to stick toward the shadows. Given that the facility was in the middle of nowhere, they figured that physical security probably wasn’t high on their security list. A few surveillance cameras and a rotating guard or two were probably all this place needed. Marc had already taken care of the surveillance cameras. Now they just had to take care of however many guards there might be roaming the hallways.

The outside of the building was quiet, as if everyone inside had abandoned the place and gone home for the evening.

Zero didn’t like it.

Something felt off. Just like that feeling he got when Diesel was in trouble at the club.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” Zero whispered, huddled behind Chase, who was trying to pick a lock to gain them access to the facility.

“Yeah, I know. It’s never this easy. Even gangsters have more guards walking around than this place.” Chase glanced around the space before making eye contact with his fiancé. “You better stick to my ass like glue in there,” Chase warned.

Levi and Isaac had insisted on coming with them to rescue Diesel. They had spent the better part of two hours threatening their fiancés with castration, murder, and even calling off their weddings if they so much as tried to make them wait in the vans. But it was the threat of withholding sex that finally caused Chase and Jared to break and give in to their demands.

Matteo simply shook his head in disgust, reminding them that their fiancés had now identified their Achilles’ heel and would never win another argument again in the future. The look of pure horror on their faces was priceless.

Zero envied the two couples. He wanted that type of love. That playful understanding and support for one another.

“And here I thought that I was the bossy bottom,” Levi quipped, slipping past Zero and wrapping his arms around Chase’s bulging bicep, tugging it close to him.

Chase rolled his eyes. “I need my arm back, love. People need killing, and someone needs saving.”

With an annoyed huff, the violet-eyed dancer released his property and took a step back and out of the way.

With a flick of his wrist, the door unlocked. Chase pulled it open and peered inside.

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