“Ready?” Lincoln asked.
I nodded and was surprised when he took my hand in his. I didn’t pull away because I had a feeling I would need his support even with Jace out there trying to calm us.
We continued down the stairs. I noticed the door to the left, and I assumed it led outside. We walked through the living room; the house didn’t get any cleaner down here. Couches that looked like they belonged in the seventies dominated the space. We went down another hallway and entered a cramped kitchen. Dishes were overflowing the sink. Trash littered the floor and three men sitting, smoking, and playing cards sat at a small card table. The air was so thick with smoke I nearly choked on it.
Nothing seemed amiss with the three men sitting at the table. Other than living in filth and squalor, they looked like they were any other middle-aged men. They wore jeans and T-shirts, and nothing seemed remarkable about them.
“Where are we?” Lincoln asked as he circled the table with barely concealed revulsion.
I shuddered as a giant bug crawled over my foot. “I don’t know.”
“Why are we here again?” Lincoln enquired. “I mean, I know we want to help your…Harry. What I don’t understand is, if his father is a…reader, why can’t he figure out what his son can do?”
I tried to push away my feelings of disgust and fear. I decided to follow his lead. “Our gifts haven’t exactly been textbook. If Greg has never encountered or known someone like us, it’s hard to understand our capabilities. He thinks Harry’s like a dream walker, but it’s hard to say.”
“What time did we begin this?” Lincoln inquired after a few minutes of silence. He paused to look at a receipt attached to a large paper bag. It seemed like the bags you got for takeout.
“I would say a little before eight. Why?” I queried, moving towards him.
“This receipt was from today. The time stamp on here says six forty-four,” Lincoln explained before he put an arm around my shoulders.
Again, I didn’t push him away. “Are we in El Paso, Texas? What kind of dream is this vivid?”
Suddenly there was a massive crash, as a door reverberated from off the wall by the back door. I didn’t even know a door was there. I jumped, and Lincoln pulled me in closer.
“Remember they can’t see us or hear us,” Lincoln reminded me.
I nodded as I willed my heart to slow down.
“What time are they coming?” the man who busted through the door asked.
He was a tall, lanky man. He wore a wifebeater and jeans that hung off his thin hips. His boxers were hanging out from the top of his jeans. His ears were too big for his head, with large ear gauges making them stretch even further. Tattoos covered his neck, arms, and fingers. He looked nothing like his…friends.
I looked up at Lincoln with a raised brow. “Which one of these is not like the other one?”
He barely stifled a laugh. “Really?”
“I’ve come to realize the more I’m around Jaxson or Noah, the more I want to joke in high-stress situations.” I shrugged ruefully.
“We told you, soon,” one of the men sitting around the table said, inhaling deeply from his cigarette. “Relax man.”
“The drugs are wearing off, and we don’t have anymore,” the man yelled. “Tell them we need an early pickup.”
I heard a cry from down below. Suddenly, I was assaulted with a feeling of fear that wasn’t my own.
“We need to go downstairs,” I swallowed past the thick knot in my throat.
Lincoln nodded before he took my hand in his once more. A lead weight settled in the pit of my stomach. Something didn’t feel right. Who was drugged and who was supposed to be coming?
“Did you know that over fourteen thousand people are trafficked into the US every year?” Lincoln queried in a low voice, leading me towards the door the man had just opened.
“Do you think this is what that is?” I asked hoping he was wrong.
“It makes sense,” Lincoln responded quietly.
We passed the man, and out of curiosity, I reached out to touch him. I could feel him as if I were literally touching him, but he didn’t respond.
Lincoln raised an eyebrow before he pulled me down the steps. I hesitated once more as I looked at the stairs leading down to the basement. When I was younger, one of boys in the group home I was in had a morbid curiosity about horror movies and serial killer documentaries. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed an excellent documentary and horror flick, but he took it a step further. He would watch them repeatedly. He would study them like he was taking notes.