Page 58 of Love Fire

Nate looks at me confused and then the same realization hits him. “ERIN!”

Neither of us hear a response. In all the chaos, Erin disappeared from right under my nose. She must have been taken by the same men who took me.

I hastily search the bodies in the area. Surely one of these guards is still alive, playing dead. They can tell me where Erin is, and then I’ll kill him for sure.

“Brent,” Nate says while catching up to me. "You need to slow down.”

I don’t listen to him. My knees are getting weak and my vision is starting to blur. My entire body is in pain, but I can’t stop. Erin is in danger and I’m the only one who can help her. I keep searching for a still breathing body.

“Brent!”

Erin is missing. God only knows what is happening to her. It was my job to protect her, that’s the role I gave myself. Instead, she had to come to my rescue, and that only put her in more danger.

“Brent!”

I need to get to her right now. If anyone hurts her, or worse, I don’t know what I’ll do. I need her to be safe. I need her to be okay. I’ll set this entire mountain ablaze if that’s what it takes to get Erin back safely in my arms.

“Brent!”

I finally turn around to face him. “WHAT?” I say with as deep of a roar as I have the strength for.

“You need to slow down.”

“Slow down? It’s your sister who’s missing, you should speed up!” My knees buckle underneath me but Nate catches me. I steady myself against him and look in his eyes, “I won’t rest until Erin’s safe.”

“I know, I get that,” Nate says. “But you need to take a moment. You’re hurt. You don’t have much energy left and right now you’re wasting it. That won’t help Erin.”

He’s right. All the pain from the hours of torture is catching up to me. I need to heal, but I don’t know if we have that kind of time.

Fuck, I need to be smarter about this. Frantically, running around isn’t going to solve anything. It’ll just tire me out more. I take a deep breath and focus my attention again.

“Okay, okay,” I say, gathering my thoughts. We need to start somewhere. “Do you know where they’d take her?”

“I don’t know, this is the bunker I’d check first. They have tons of others all spread out along the mountain.” Nate looks around at the bodies laying around us. “Wait, let’s check their pockets.”

Nate and I spread out and search the pockets of the dead guards. I mostly find wallets and a few extra bullets. But my luck soon breaks and, on a guard wearing a prestigious uniform, I find a key labeled ‘warehouse #3”. I toss it over to Nate.

“Does this mean anything to you?”

“Warehouse #3? Yeah, I believe it's on the other side of the mountain. It might be where they planned on taking her.``

I continue looking through the guard’s pockets and find a cell phone. Using facial recognition, I manage to unlock it. We’re lucky he didn’t get shot in the face.

With Nate looking over my shoulder, I search the guard’s phone. I quickly find texts about ‘Project Homeland’, their plan to get Erin and bring her to warehouse #3. According to these texts, I was always meant to be bait. They knew Erin would try to rescue me and she walked right into their trap, all for me.

“FUCK!” I hurl the phone and it shatters against a rock. We played right into her father’s hand. They wanted us up here in the mountains. They wanted to just grab me the other night. They needed Erin out in the open.

I’ve never failed so spectacularly. I got so caught up in trying to stop iridescent that I missed the obvious signs of a trap. I led Erin, the person I want to protect most, right into danger.

But the mission isn’t over. I know where she is, warehouse #3. I can still save her, stop her father, and shut down iridescent forever. I can make all this right.

“You’ll need this.” Nate tosses the key back to me and I catch it. He crouches down and starts removing the clothes from the least mangled and ruined corpse.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I assume the plan is to save my sister.”

“Yeah, of course, but why are you-”

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