The second my feet hit the ground, Valen’s body jolted violently, likely expecting one of his tormentors to come back and fuck with him some more.
It seemed their scheme was just as psychological as it was physical, too, because there was a slab of wood set out on some old saw horses. And on top of that wood was a neatly arranged supply of things to torture him with.
There were the typical blunt and sharp objects—hammers, knives, and a piece of pipe. But there were also some more unconventional things. Like screws. And a cordless drill to drive them in with. Like some sort of battery. And pliers.
Fuck, the pliers.
Not much made my stomach turn over quite like the idea of someone’s teeth being pulled out of a living person’s mouth.
Dead was different.
I’d done that many of times.
But there was no way I had a steady enough gut to do that to a fellow human being when they still had breath in their lungs.
I forced my attention away from those tools, away from the bloody rags, and toward the man who was worth walking into a death trap without backup for.
He looked rough.
Someone had clearly managed to at least get to blunt and sharp on him before they needed a little nap.
But he was alive.
That was all that mattered.
Everything else could be fixed.
Taking a steadying breath, I moved out from behind him, watching as his eyes went round when his gaze fell on me.
With my free hand, I pressed a finger to my lips, getting an almost immediate nod from him as I looked up at the chain he was dangling from, trying to decide the best way to get him down.
“Shit,” I hissed under my breath, looking at it latched through a hook embedded in the far wall.
I would need to lower him.
It wasn’t the weight that concerned me. Adrenaline could make a mom stronger than a car. It could make me stronger than Valen.
But the chains were going to rattle as I did it.
And the damn building was so eerily quiet.
Still it was the only way.
“Hang on,” I whispered as I moved behind him, going toward the hook and putting down my bag with my fancy, illegal gun, so I had both hands free to work it off of the hook and start to lower Valen down.
I cringed at the noise that sounded, to me, like the loudest thing I’d ever heard. But it must have been my worry that made me sensitive to it, because no one came running as I—inch by painstaking inch—lowered Valen onto his own feet.
I let out a sigh of relief when he kept his arms over his head, not letting the chains clatter down, even though I knew it was killing him, that they probably had the most severe case of pins and needles imaginable.
But he kept them up so I had a chance to rush back toward him, pull out his gag, and start to undo the figure eight pattern around his wrists.
“Where is everyone?” he whispered to me as I struggled with the chains.
My gaze must have been guilty because he let out a savage curse.
“Are your arms going to be able to work enough to haul your body out of the window?” I asked, cringing as the chains rattled.
We were both too busy with each other right then, too concerned with his chains, both our heads ducked.
We never saw anyone coming.
But I damn sure felt the hands that grabbed me and yanked me back off my feet.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Valen
I never felt panic before like I felt it when I saw Louana get yanked up off her feet and dragged backward by the very man I’d agreed to meet with in an attempt to protect her from.
Hell, not even the panic I’d felt the night before when I got in that van and knew right down to my marrow that I was never going to be free again compared to it right then.
I had to give Curtis a little credit, though. He’d clearly become a better criminal than he’d been back when I’d known him.
Because he didn’t let on that anything had gone sideways, even if my gut told me it had. Nope. He just drove us out to the damn jewelry store like he’d said, then gone over the plan.
Hell, he even gave me a damn pipe to use to break open some of the jewelry cases, so we could grab as much merchandise as possible.
“This much fucking money all around her, and that ugly fucking bitch only ever sent me a scratcher on my birthday,” Curtis grumbled to himself as he looked at a watch that easily would have fetched ten grand.
The whole robbery part, that was a bit of a blur. Just a lot of snatching and shoving into bags while I hoped to hell his aunt had everything fully insured.