Page 35 of Golden Knight

Zeev responds, “Good. Good. Jake and I will go through the front. Everyone else can close in on this motherfucker. Make sure you pay attention. There is a high probability Amber is in there and we don’t want her to get hurt.”

Everyone around nods in confirmation.

“Let's go find her,” I declare and then head toward the door with Zeev right behind me.

Busting down the front door, Zeev and I use our flashlight to guide us through the house. We roam through the first floor and there is no sign of anyone. We make our way through the top floor and still no one. Not even a sign that anyone has been here.

“No one is here,” I say in defeat.

“I’ll call Blanche and see if we can find anything else. Don’t worry, man. We'll find her.”

”I just got her back—“ I start to say but then I hear a noise. Bang. Bang. It sounds like something is hitting a metal pipe.

I turn toward Zeev and Frank. “Do you hear that?”

Bang. Bang.

“I think it’s coming from below,” Zeev says.

“Does this place have a basement,” I ask Frank.

“I didn’t see anything on the semantics. But maybe we missed something.”

All three of us make our way back to the kitchen following the banging noise. I search the room but nothing is obvious. When I hear the noise again, I squat down to the floor examining it. Something seems off with parts of it but I’m not sure what.

“Zeev, do you see this? The floorboards seem to be lifted here.”

He squats down looking at the same spot. “Yeah, it seems off. Help me pull on it.”

We both start peeling the floorboards that are lifted up and sure enough there’s a secret hatch.

Zeev pulls the hatch open and it is the entrance to stairs that lead down to some type of room. I take a deep breath. I make my way down the stairs and when I hear Amber yell out, “Jake he has a gun.”

I don’t falter though. I keep going. No matter what I need to get to her and as I get closer to her, I’m not prepared for what I see.

Chapter twenty-four

Amber

I open my eyes when a sharp pain rings through my head. I start to sit up and my head starts to swim. I place my hand over my eyes, hoping to stop the room from spinning.

I try to look around to see if I recognize the place, but I can’t tell where I am other than a damp, dark room. A staircase that looks as if it has seen better days, leads down into the room. A pipe runs up the wall, with ridges coming out of it where it connects to other sections of the pipe. I try to use it to stand up, but when I do, I don’t get very far. My wrist is handcuffed to the pipe and it will only allow me to move so much. “What the fuck?”

Think Amber, how did you get here? The last thing I remember is going home with Jake. In the middle of the night, I got a text from Paul.

Paul: I need you to meet me at The Tower.

Amber: What’s going on?

Paul: We have an emergency. I can’t tell you until you get here.

Amber: Be there soon.

I remember grabbing my stuff from Jake’s apartment and grabbing an Uber back to The Tower. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, hoping it will help me remember, but that is when everything goes foggy.

The door bangs open and the sound of someone walking down the stairs rings through the room. I straighten up. I pull my wrist to stand up again. Erratically looking around the room, trying to figure out how I’m going to get out of this. Then a voice breaks through my fear, a voice I recognize, “Good, you're awake.”

“Paul?”

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