“Oh, honey. I… it’s company policy that we can’t give out information about clients.”
“I know. I know. They’ve told me that everywhere. But I know that’s his bike out there,” I said, waving toward the lot where his bike wasn’t, but I saw a light in her eyes that said she knew exactly who I was talking about. “He’s here. And I just need… I just need to snap a picture. I swear I won’t tell anyone that you told me where he was.”
To that, the lady sighed, nodding her head.
“My ex-husband fucked everything that moved,” she said. “Gambled away our house too,” she added. Then she stood, grabbing a key card and putting it down on the desk. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about who may or may not be staying in room 7C,” she said, giving me a small smirk. “I have to go check and make sure the snack dispenser is working,” she added. “It’s been on the fritz,” she told me as she moved out from behind the desk. “Get some justice for you and those babies,” she said before she was gone.
Alone, I snatched the key card and made my way to the elevator.
I didn’t feel guilty about lying.
Not if it meant possibly saving Valen.
7C was located at the back of the building on the second floor above the lobby level.
Taking a deep breath, I put in the key and moved into the room.
Nothing seemed off at first. Save for maybe the fact that it didn’t look like anyone had been staying there, of course. Since he hadn’t.
It wasn’t until I checked out the closet and saw the duffle bags there that I felt my hair starting to stand up.
I knew the second I picked it up, from the way the contents clacked together, what was inside.
Guns.
But I took it over to the bed and unzipped it.
There were handguns, sure. But also the kinds of guns that did a fuck of a lot of damage in a short amount of time.
My gaze immediately went to the windows again, this time seeing the small set of binoculars situated on the windowsill.
“I knew it,” I mumbled to myself as I made my way over there, picking them up, and looking down at the building behind the hotel.
Everything was still as far as I could tell.
As it would be if they’d spent the night before breaking into a jewelry store.
Valen’s bike was nowhere to be found, and I couldn’t decide if that was a good, or a really bad, thing.
Would Valen really have walked into a trap? When he had so much prepared to try to take them out? If he went with them willingly, surely he thought he was going to make it through the night. Right?
Right.
He would never leave his parents and sister hanging that way.
He would have at least called them and told them he loved them.
With a sigh, I moved away from the window, finding the hotel notepad on the table. With a list of names and descriptions.
Six guys. Plus Curtis.
I was pretty damn outnumbered.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
And it wouldn’t matter if I had the upper hand. If I could catch them unaware. If I could pick them off before they even knew I was around.
I wasn’t shy about taking lives. Especially the lives of rapists killing dickheads. Some lives simply needed to be snuffed out. The world was better off without them. My father taught me that.
Reaching for my phone, I shot a text to Adler and then Fallon.
I knew what they were likely to do.
Wait until nightfall.
Less witnesses.
I even had to agree that it was the smart plan.
But I bet if it was Danny who was possibly being held against her will and tortured, Fallon wouldn’t waste any time getting in there to save her.
I grabbed the pad, ripping off the page and sticking it in my back pocket before going back to the bed, shoving the binoculars inside, then zipping up the duffle bag, and hauling it up on my shoulder.
A text dinged me as I was getting in the elevator.
Don’t go in alone. You don’t know the gnarly shit these guys do to women.
That was from Fallon.
I didn’t need that warning. I was well aware what monstrous men could do to women when they caught them alone.
But that didn’t change the fact that each moment passing was a moment where Valen could be getting hurt, or inching closer to losing his life.
I made my way out a side door that led onto a small smoking patio, wanting to avoid the woman at the desk, and made my way to my car, rifling through the guns.
Valen had compiled a good collection. Along with some silencers. Which I went ahead and screwed onto Fallon’s gun and one of the handguns in the bag.
I could be pretty lethal with a handgun.
On any normal mission, I wouldn’t have even thought of using anything else. Anything bigger was bulkier and hard to hide.
But going up against, potentially, seven feral guys with no backup?
Yeah, I wanted to cover my bases.
Which was why I grabbed a couple knives too.
And then I reached for it.
The gun I was shocked Valen had even been able to get his hands on. They weren’t even legal in the US last I heard.
An almost petite submachine gun.
No more than ten inches long.
It was the perfect gun for the job, even if I hoped not to have to need it.
In an ideal world, I could sneak in and get Valen out then leave Curtis and his crew up to Fallon when he arrived.
But, let’s face it, when did shit ever go that well?
I wanted to be prepared no matter what.
Rummaging around in my messy backseat floor, I found an old paper shopping bag with handles and flattened it enough to be able to slip the submachine gun inside to keep it hidden as I made my way toward the building where the cars and van were parked.
From the outside, it didn’t look like there was a basement. No windows. No BILCO-style doors. Just a somewhat squat rectangular brick building with old genuine glass windows. The panes that weren’t cracked or broken had about two decades or more worth of dirty on them, obscuring the insides so much it was nearly impossible to see inside.
Taking careful steps, I crouched down under one of the low, broken panes, listening for a moment before popping up to look inside.
There seemed to be some sort of makeshift living room with old, tattered couches. That were littered with the bodies of sleeping men.
Five.
Only five.
So there were two unaccounted for.
With these guys unconscious, they would be easy to pick off. But if two were awake and walking around, they could sneak up behind and take me out.
Damnit.
Being patient wasn’t a strong suit of mine but I ducked below the window line once again and made my way toward the next room.
A bathroom, as it would turn out.
Where a giant of a guy was bunkered down on the can, playing some game on his phone.
That left one.
Just one.
I moved toward the back of the place, finding those windows partially boarded up from the inside with cardboard, of all things.
When I walked toward the far side of the building that had a narrow alley between it and the next empty building, though, there was a gap in the cardboard that allowed me to see.
And what did I see?
Something that made all the blood rush out of my body.
Because there, dangling by the wrists from the ceiling, was a bound, shirtless, battered Valen.