“We had our suspicions last year, but then things cooled off. The drugs slowly going away. Then a month or so ago they were back in high gear. Beta Beta was rolling them out like candy, and I had the proof,” she ground out through her teeth. “That little packet I had with me that night I was here… I’d finally convinced one of the boys to sell me some. I was taking it to the station for evidence, so they could get a damn warrant to search the place.”
But she ended up stepping up for Avery instead and helping her and Gage get away from fucking Garrett. Then Slate took the drugs and told her to get the fuck out.
I could have said sorry, the words on the tip of my tongue, but I wasn’t.
“You made choices.” I wanted to feel for Holly. But I fucking felt nothing except anger for the situations she put Avery in, all because she was working a damn case. “You could have asked for help fucking months ago. Could have at least given Avery a heads-up that things weren’t what they seemed so she would stop worrying about you. Instead, you let her believe you were being hurt, drugged, possibly fucking raped, and like the dumb bitch we all assumed you were, you just kept walking straight back into the depths of fucking hell.”
“I had no choice! I’ve been walking this line for two years,” she argued, but I could tell she was tired, broken down, and finding it hard.
“You were in too deep,” I deadpanned, shaking my head. “Your handlers should have pulled you out the second Beta Beta got you drunk. Then drugged you. Then fucked you, right?”
Holly was strong.
Stronger than I ever gave her credit for.
Though, now I knew why.
She had to be because they left her high and fucking dry.
She might have gone into that operation thinking she was going to find some drug dealer, some small crime syndicate, and walk out. Instead, she got sucked in, and the people who were meant to protect her, the people who should have had her back, didn’t.
They let her drown.
They let her get beaten down.
Again and fucking again by these frat boys. Forcing her to do shit she never should have done, so they could come out the other side and say they solved the case.
The tears sparkling in her eyes, they were fucking real, and she was trying so hard to fight them because she knew I was right. She knew she was going to have to live with what those bastards put her through.
“We couldn’t risk more people dying,” she whispered, trying to keep her chin up.
“They couldn’t risk any more people dying.” I laughed, shaking my head. “But you know what they could risk? You. Now tell me what the fuck the point of this little story is? Tell me why the fuck I’m still here listening to you and not looking for my fucking old lady?”
She swiped at the tears on her rosy cheeks.
I had to give her fucking credit, she sat here and took my brazen bullshit better than some men I fucking know.
“You haven’t figured that bit out yet?”
I leaned in, looming across the table. “I swear to fucking God, Holly…”
“Beta Beta is dealing the drugs. Someone has to be making them. Someone with a fascination with playing god. Someone who has access to bodies after death and test results and can adjust the drugs to try to counter what went wrong with the last batch.”
Auron didn’t miss a fucking thing.
And suddenly, I was acutely aware of just how fucked-up this was.
“Someone who has now had those things taken away from him and needs live subjects to test his death pills on,” Shake added, his nostrils flaring. “That’s if the first one he acquired is still alive.”
Thayleah.
That’s why he kept her.
It’s also why the pills stopped showing up last year because he was in prison after Emma’s assault.
Music suddenly filled the air, and Holly whipped her phone from her pocket and pressed it to her ear. “Yeah? Shit. Okay. We’re coming.” She hung up and looked me dead in the eyes, a darkness there that hadn’t been before, but that I found I kind of fucking liked. “So far, I haven’t told my team what’s going on. They know nothing. So, you can give me hell all you like about my choices, but this one is one I made for Avery. The person I had watching Garrett said it looks like he’s heading back to where the girls are located. So, if you want to get to her and get rid of him, this is your window.”
“I’m not sure we understand the term, get rid of, officer,” Repo taunted. “Could I hear an example?”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Where is she?” I questioned, able to feel the dread like two hands wrapped around my heart, and slowly, so fucking slowly, squeezing it until it burst.
“The Beta Beta frat house.”
AVERY
“There’s a door, then a really steep staircase, then another door at the bottom,” Thayleah explained quietly as we crept through the darkness, one of her arms wrapped around me, the other tracing the wall. “They have to take me down to go to the bathroom.”
“Do the doors need keys?” I asked through clenched teeth, the pain shooting through my ankle and my side as we hobbled toward the strip of light we could see on the floor across the room.
Sweat was already forming across my skin. Almost everywhere. And my breathing was getting heavier and heavier, attempting to race at the speed of my heart—the pain trying to take over and shut me down.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted softly. “Sometimes I heard them lock it, then a little bit later the music would start playing. But they came up pretty often, and I don’t remember hearing it lock and unlock.”
My foot connected first with a soft thud, the both of us holding our breath for God only knows how long before we figured no one had heard. I looked down, seeing the small crack of light under the door before reaching out and patting softly, searching for “The handle,” I whispered, gripping the old knob in my hand.
“It creeks,” Thayleah rasped.
The soft squeak as I pulled it open, sending a shudder straight through me, a wave of goosebumps chasing after it.
The light that came with it was like a slap across the face, the both of us turning inward and shielding our eyes. The small staircase had a tiny circular window to the side, letting in a stream of sunlight, orangey in color telling me it was either a setting sun or a rising one—my brain still too foggy to try and figure out which way would be north and which would be east.
We both blinked through the light, looking at each other for the first time.
And we smiled.
At least I tried.
The split in my lip and the stitches were still making it hard to even speak. “Sorry about the look, and I’m sure you didn’t order a crippled hero. Garrett forced me to crash my ca—”
“You’re exactly the hero I ordered,” she cut in, her sweet face frowning.
I quickly gave her a once-over, checking for anything major. Her hair was matted and knotted and would need a lot of work, but it was the least of my worries when my eyes reached her wrists. There was a bloody cut the entire way around the both of them where the cable ties had rubbed through the skin. Deep enough to bleed, the dried blood mixing with new blood as the cut was irritated. I looked back up at her face, and she was simply staring at me, tears falling one after another.