Rebel’s already running; he jumps over the body of the man he just killed and sweeps his gun from left to right, scouring the room for further assailants. Keeler is right behind him, followed by Cade and then me, with Carnie bringing up the rear. “Find the door into the basement,” Rebel shouts back to us. “Cade, take Soph. Find her father.”
“No! I’m staying with—” A strong hand on my shoulder drags me sideways pulling me in the opposite direction Rebel heads off in, and Cade is in front of me, his face an inch away from mine. I want to slap him. My arm is half raised, my hand well on its way to making contact with his face, but Cade grabs hold of me by the wrist.
“You can’t go where he’s going, Sophia,” he says. “He’s about to descend into hell. You aren’t ready for that.”
“Fuck you! I need to go with him!”
Cade shakes his head quickly. “Do you want to get him killed? Is that what you want?”
“Of course not!”
“Then do as he says and come with me. We’ll do what we have to do, we’ll find your dad, and Jamie will do what he has to do, too.” His hold on my wrist increases to painful degrees. I’m about to argue further, but then I realize Rebel’s gone and a confusion of people are scrambling to get by one another up ahead, which can only spell certain death for me and Cade.
We’re in a large, well-stocked kitchen. This is the first time I’ve taken a beat to look around see where we are. To the left, the door to the pantry is wide open, revealing stacks and stacks of food, tinned goods, cleaning products, as well as two guns sitting abandoned on the edge of a shelf. To the right, a closed door with a heavy-duty padlock bolted to it. Straight ahead of us: chaos. No one seems to have noticed Cade and me hovering in the dark kitchen yet, but that won’t be the case for long. Through the melee of limbs and well-tailored suits ahead, I make out Julio Perez’s face, contorted into a rictus of rage. His cheeks are purple, his jowls shaking.
A gun goes off, followed by another and then another, and Cade yanks me to the side, to the right, toward the door with the padlock bolted to it. He holds up his gun and fires at the heavy Yale lock, and the thing shatters, falling to the floor. He opens the door, then, and grabs hold of me, pulling me to his side.
“Follow. Follow me,” he says. With his gun held up by his head, Cade moves through the door and into complete darkness. I’m right on his heels, my own gun gripped tightly in both hands. Through the door, a set of stairs descends into the pitch black. I stick close to him, my heart fluttering as I try not to panic. Fuck, this is so bad. God knows what’s going to be waiting for us down here. Ramirez’s men have undoubtedly set up a dungeon where they torture their captives. My father’s probably naked, chained to a wall, missing at least three of his fingers, bloody, bruised and broken. I don’t know if I can witness that, knowing that it’s all my fault.
I feel like crying.
Crying is pointless right now, though. I have to keep my shit together. I have to stay focused. Anything could happen, and I need to be ready for that. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, Cade fumbles, his hand brushing the wall, and light suddenly explodes everywhere, illuminating our surroundings with harsh white florescent light. “What the fuck?” Cade hisses.
“Oh god.” I cover my mouth with my hands, the handle of my gun pressed against my lips. “What the hell is this?”
Cade looks around, just as confused as I am. The basement is filled with boxes. Boxes from the floor to the ceiling. Shoe boxes, hundreds of them stacked one on top of the other, except these boxes don’t contain shoes. They contain a myriad of dildos, strap-ons and other weird and wonderful sex toys, each depicted by a large, colorful image on the side of the cardboard.
My father is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it’s clear this space is being used for some rather kinky storage purposes and not for torturing people at all. “Is there another room?” I ask, searching for a doorway. “Is there another place he might be down here?”
Cade scans the large space, the muscles in his jaw popping as he thinks. “No. There can’t be. This area is the exact footprint of the farmhouse. This is all there is.”
“Then where the fuck is my father?”
“Your father’s dead, bitch.”
Cade and I both spin around at the same time. Both of our guns are raised. The man standing behind me, halfway down the steps into the basement, has his gun already trained on us though—on my head specifically—and his finger is on the trigger. “You even think about trying to shoot me and I’ll blow her fucking head off her shoulders, Mr. Preston.” The guy looks like he’s been fighting already, though his bruises look old, faded, more green and yellow than the stark blue and purple you’d associate with fresh injuries. His cheeks are a mess, covered in scabs.