Page 23 of The Alpha: Part Three
I stare at the screen for a full minute before I respond.
The rogues or the WCC?
His reply is fast and short.
The Back House.
Yeah. Fuck that place. I grin at Michael and get up from the couch. Seth is in a Desie cocoon in the bedroom. He doesn't need to come with us, and Desie sure as fuck doesn't need to be there, but he needs to know we're leaving.
I tiptoe into the dark room and whisper, “Michael and I are going out for a little bit.”
“What?” Seth whispers back. “Why? Where?”
“We're just going for a drive. We'll be back soon.”
“Be careful. Keep your phone on. Call if you need me.”
“Okay.”
“Ben?”
I pause with my hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”
“Don't be gone too long. I didn't enjoy today.”
“You got it, captain.”
Michael and I are just as good at starting fires as we are putting them out. There wasn't a single person in the area when we drove through on the way, not even an empty vehicle, so there's no one around to ask us why we're carrying in containers of gas or ask any questions when we don't walk out of the building with them.
“Think we're far enough away?” I ask Michael. We're across the street from the building. There aren't any homes here, just empty buildings, and the closest store is the gas station we bought the gas from on the way here. We're not worried about getting caught, nobody's going to care if this place burns down.
“What do you think?”
I look across at the place that almost took my spirit and my life. Well, not the place exactly, but what it represents. So many people lost their lives and livelihoods inside those walls. I will never forget the stink of that mat or all the desperate, greedy, defeated people surrounding it. I will never get the sound of their screams out of my ears. “Can you make it?”
Michael's jaw clenches. “I can make it.” He lights the fabric hanging out of the bottle in his hand and snarls at the building before he takes a couple steps and launches the bottle across the street and parking lot. The bottle shatters the glass of the upstairs window. Flores's office. We wanted the fire to start there. It takes less than ten minutes for flames to swallow the building, and in less than two hours it's a pile of ash and embers.
Chapter eleven
Desie
The smell of gasoline and smoke rips me out of the safety of sleep and my heart jumps into my throat when I open my eyes to find that Michael and Ben are the source. They're happy, though. Not anxious or exhausted. Just happy and calm.
“What happened?” Seth snaps. He throws off the blankets and stalks across the room to look over the twins. He touches their foreheads and turns their heads side to side looking for any sign of hurt. He lifts their hands and inspects them too, bringing them up to smell them. “What did you do?”
They look at each other and nod. “It had to go,” Michael says.
“What had to go? Ben?”
“The Back House.”
Seth looks from Ben back to Michael. “Are you okay?”
They nod.
“Was anyone there?”
“No,” Ben answers. “We made sure.”
