A fucking crate.
How did people like this sleep at night? How did they stop themselves from jumping off bridges? How did they not spontaneously combust with guilt and shame?
The middle man I met at the bar scurried forward, lifted the latch and swung the big door open. The seller moved in and trained his flashlight inside.
I got as close to him as I could stomach and looked. I clocked her immediately. I also clocked there were at least two dozen of them. They were barely clothed, clearly not allowed to bathe, had nothing but a few ragged blankets to make that crate even slightly comfortable and all appeared underfed.
They looked beyond miserable. They looked lost, terrified out of their minds and totally beaten.
Blood roared in my ears and it took everything I had to check it and carry out the game.
Therefore, I uttered the code words that would mean the team should proceed with the extraction. “I’ll take two. That one, right side, third in and the one at the back in the middle. The others are too skinny.”
I barely got out the word “skinny” when an alarm sounded and I saw flashing red lights throughout the warehouse. A nanosecond later, I was suddenly blinded when all the lights in the warehouse were switched on, bright and overpowering.
Fuck, shit, fuck.
Too soon. They wouldn’t breach now. Not until I was clear. No way. No fucking way.
Something was wrong.
I braced on an aching foot in order to whirl and run but was hooked by the seller with an arm around my waist. I heard the door to the crate swing shut, pinning in the girls even as I saw Nick turn on the man who had a gun on him and grab the gun.
They started grappling as the seller tugged me back and another henchman turned on Nick and the man he was struggling with and opened fire.
Shit, fuck, shit, fucking fuck, fuck, fuck!
I whirled in my captor’s arm, hand up, and clawed his neck. He let out a howl of pain, his arm loosened, I lifted a knee high, suddenly thankful for my short skirt that gave me range of motion, and caught him sharp in the gonads. He yowled, I tore free and fucking ran.
In these bare seconds, all hell had broken loose in the warehouse. Clearly, there were more bad guys lurking and it was equally clear an operation had been launched to seize the warehouse. There was gunfire coming from everywhere, shouts, boots hitting the concrete floors, pandemonium.
The man Nick had been grappling with was down and bleeding from a wound in his chest.
Nick had disappeared.
Not surprising he didn’t take my back. He might for some reason be acting as a CI to the Feds but he’d always been all about himself.
But I was fucked. I had no weapon. There were operatives in play who may or may not know I was a plant. And I had to find my way out of this warehouse so I could have the future I’d waited sixteen years for.
So I ran, using crates for cover and checking that the coast was clear before making my way to the next one, doing this making a mental note actually to add the line in my contract doubling my hourly rate if I had to wear heels.
This and escape were my thoughts when I was caught around the chest and hauled back into a man’s body.
Fuck.
Before I could begin to execute maneuvers to get free, my heart stopped beating, my stomach plummeted and my world rocked when Creed appeared in front of me, gun raised just as I felt the muzzle of a gun against my temple.
Fuck!
One second after that, Creed’s gun discharged, the arm around my chest loosened and the gun at my head went away as the man behind me shouted in pain when the bullet ripped through his thigh.
One second after that, I cleared him and started running to Creed.
And one second after that, my world exploded.
This was because two shots were fired not from the man Creed brought down but from another one who hit our scene from behind. They whizzed by me and hit Creed. Blood sprayed in a hideous cloud from his neck and his chest jerked back before he fell back, landing heavy without even attempting to break his fall.
“No!” I shrieked, still running toward him.
More bullets flew and I dropped to the side of my hip, sliding toward Creed like I was stealing a base. I yanked the gun out of his motionless hand, twisted, lifted, aimed and fired two kill shots. One directly in the face of the man who shot Creed, one through the throat of the man who grabbed me and was on the ground, recovering and aiming his weapon at me.
Two lives extinguished, two more lives taken by me.
I didn’t give it a thought.
I turned, pulled myself up on my knees, dropped the gun with a clatter and bent over Creed.
My Creed. My beautiful, beautiful Creed, on his back, eyes closed, not breathing, blood pooling from the wound in his neck.