Page 38 of A Light in the Darkness
I’d have got him, too, if he didn’t dance out of the way, chuckling as he draws his phone out of his pocket.
I wonder if it’s Remy calling with some ridiculous order for him and almost shout for him to hang up and come back to bed, just to piss Remy off and fuck with his head a little. But the smile slips off Moose’s face, and he tears his eyes from me.
He doesn’t do it before I can see the worry there.
Chapter twenty-two
Remy
“You’re telling me John Smith was a fucking insider,notan informant?” I growl, turning to Kent as we scan the empty fourth floor.
“Michael only told him that we were coming to help break his girl out. He paid a good amount of money for what he thought was a vigilante mission to help him. He didn’t care about the rest of them.”
I drop my head into my hands, massaging the spot between my eyes where a headache is spiking. We don’t have time for this. We killed every one of the guards, including the fucker John Smith who apparently used to work here. But the masters are gone, and there’s no saying if and when they’re coming back.
“Un-fucking-believable.” I growl. “I’ve got to stop trusting Michael.”
“Michael’s got to stop trusting other people.” Kent corrects. “He’s naïve. I had my suspicions about John from when we first heard of him, but when we met earlier today, I could tell there was something wrong about him. He claimed he was in love with his girl, made it out to be some sort of story for the ages, but he just had a favorite victim. After I took out Natalia, I found him waiting for his girl. That’s when he let it slip that he’s been in love with her for years. He didn’t give us all that information because his girl knew it, he gave us that information because he used to be a guard here. He was fired for racking up a debt he couldn’t pay on the salary they gave him and trying to sneak in to see her without paying.”
I don’t bother pointing out the hypocrisy of them firing John, not for raping a girl, but for not paying to do it. “So, did he tip off the masters? Did you kill him?”
“Slit his throat, killed the guard who came to escort him, stole that guy’s uniform, and told the girl to go back to her cell and wait until someone came for her. I couldn’t exactly tell you all that while we were waiting to kill the other two in the comms room.”
“Jesus Christ.” I mutter. “You did all that in twenty minutes? Remind me to never piss you off.”
Kent grins. “I’ve got your six now, Boudreaux.”
I think that’s an assurance that he won’t kill me for stepping on his toes. “I just wanted to do one last sweep. I’m not sure where the masters are. I don’t think John tipped anyone off, but I want to make sure we got them all. That’s the mission, right, boss?”
Boss?
“It is.” I agree, turning to clear the last room on the fourth floor. It’s empty aside from the various equipment, medieval looking torture devices and tables. Kaia said this was where they did the initiation, and I don’t need to know anything more about what that meant.
I close the door, hustling through the hall back to where Kent is coming out of the one opposite me. He motions for me to precede him going down the steps, and I watch our path forward while he keeps the scope of his gun trained behind us, heading off any surprise attacks.
We clear the third, second, and first floor quickly, both of us eager to get out of this horror show. He checks the women’s cells while I check the men’s, each of us verifying the other’s work.
It’s as we’re stepping back into the outdoors that I see the man standing in the shadows from the corner of my eye. I guess Kent sees him, too, because he pushes me out of the way to take his shot… mere seconds before the bullet whizzes past where I stood thirty seconds ago.
It lodges itself in Kent’s shoulder, but the man goes down before he sees it, half his arm obliterated by Kent’s shot.
“Fuck!” I spit, rushing to check on him. Kent’s face is pulled into a mask of pain, but he shakes me off with a hand pressed to his wound. Blood seeps out from around it, though it’s certainly slowed by the pressure he’s applying to it.
“Go!” I tell him. “I’ve got your six, this time.”
Kent does as he’s told, striding toward the plane, where Victor is waiting with a hand out to pull him forward. My eyes sweep the entire lawn, looking for any other threat. I’m assuming the man we just put a bullet in was one of the masters, given the lack of a guard’s uniform, which means there’s still one unaccounted for. But as we make our way to the plane, no one moves except Rich, who spans the distance himself to check on his injured friend.
Dimitri stalks toward me with both gas cans in hand, and we signal to Victor to let the pilot know we’ll be going shortly. I don’t have to communicate with Dimitri. We act in sync, going opposite directions, pouring the gasoline around the base of the castle.
I noticed enough wood support beams and joists to make burning it down a viable option, but I really want to be sure that the grenade blast obliterates everything. Once we’ve doused the entire thing, meeting up at the front, I toss the empty can into the open door of the building, letting it bounce and clatter against the flagstone. We set both sides blazing in an instant, and as much as I want to enjoy the bonfire soon to come, we’ve got a plane full of victims needing medical attention.
We’re nearly to the cargo door, Harley motioning for us to hurry, when I hear the shot.
Chapter twenty-three
Claire
“I have to go.” Moose says, stashing his phone in the pocket of his board shorts without looking at me.
