Reg flipped off the lights and crept down the rubbled soil slowly, his entire body was tense and rigid with anticipation. I’d guess because his‘What the fuck radar’was going off too.
It’s a good job that we did. Because the closer we crept, the more we heard the heavy bustle which should never have been there.
Chatter through the cracked window reached our ears.
Engines that hummed lowly in the breeze surrounded us.
Reg deviated from the path and pulled up close to a ditch which gave us a full view of the four cars parked around the underground entrance. Which would only be possible to somebody who knew the route to the tunnels like the back of their hand.
It was not exactly easy to locate when it was nothing but a hole in the ground.
“Call Dom, tell him we might need backup and the location has been compromised,” Reggie ordered as he scanned the area and pulled out his gun to check the ammo.
I pulled out my phone to do as he’d asked when a soft cry, filled with so much terror split throughout the night. I leaned forward, eyes trained in the dark to see beyond the abyss and what I saw was the back of a suited man, bathed in the shadows who pushed a half-naked girl to her knees.
She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. My blood ran cold and that chilled, calm and lethal fury I held so close, reared its beautiful, warped fucking head.
“Lara,don’t.”
I was about done with his fucking orders tonight, but I refused to forget how I was trained, all that I was taught in order to not allow my emotions to take full control.
I heaved a deep breath and called the darkness. I shut everything down and became a machine in the making, trained for destruction.
“Four cars, eight men. Two women. One leader and four drivers. Then one of our men,” I noted in a robotic tone when I noticed there was another girl beside the first.
There was a man, who stood before the girls on their knees who was clearly the leader. They all faced John,ourguy. Then either side of the leading man stood four of his men. There were four drivers ready and waiting to whisk the dead man walking away at the skip of a heartbeat.
Only they wouldn’t be fast enough to save these men.
Not tonight.
I tossed the phone at Reg, “Make the call and then we act. There is no fucking way I’m waiting and leaving those girls out there, cold and alone with our new enemies,” I declared before I opened the door silently and slipped from the car.
“Goddammit,” I heard sneered behind me.
I kept to the shadows as I moved silently through the fields. Faint chatter reached my ears as I heard John mumble in unease, “This was not part of the deal, man. I don’t want this. I don’t want no part of this. The Wyelli’s are going to kill me if they find out. We certainly didn’t agree to no goddamn girls.”
“New product. Test them and then ship them out with the next border drug run. The tunnels will be a fine way to smuggle them through. The next order will be a lot bigger. Do not disappoint me, and stop sniveling. It angers me,” the man in the suit reposed evenly as he pulled at the sleeves of his shirt.
Fuck.
Nobody is supposed to know about the tunnels under the state that connect county to county and border to border. They have been founded since the start of the Wyelli empire over two hundred years ago. My ancestors thought it would be a good way to pass undetected and as it stands that is exactly why we had never been caught. Not us obviously, we had grunts for the dirty work, but even the grunts had never been caught on our watch.
The Wyelli’s had always been untouchable.
“It ain’t worth the heat no more man,” John sniffed as he jittered back and forth on uneasy feet. Looked like he’d beensampling the product. Another reason to kill his sorry ass. “They’ll kill me.”
“If you don’t, I’ll kill you,” the shadowed man stated before he turned on his shiny heel and headed back toward the first car.
I stepped from the shadows and fired my first shot, taking out two of his men before anyone could tell what was happening. Just as easily, I allowed the abyss to consume me once more.
“We’re under attack! Cover the boss!” somebody screamed as I slipped from the darkness and dragged my knife across the throat of one man and into the spine of another.
Four down.
I turned, seeking the shadows to find their leader because he was a priority right now. We needed him to find out what the fuck he thought he was playing at. I found him as two of his men ushered him toward the car, head down and covered from the bullets they thought would fly. His men tried to shove him inside with haste, but he just stopped and stood tall for a moment as if he could sense my eyes on him. He stared back, calm and collected as he smirked at me mockingly.
The air left me in a brutal rush as my lungs felt heavy, weighed down under a heavy layer of turmoil at the face that stared back at me.