I hurried away from the apartment building, scanning the darkened road. It was past midnight now, only a few cars rumbling by on the street. I’d have looked for a quiet side-street where I could have stolen one, but I wasn’t familiar with the street I was heading to or what part of the city it was in. I wasn’t sure where I was going.
I headed toward a busier street up ahead. Just as I came around the corner, I caught sight of a cab with its available light on. At my wave, it pulled up by the curb, and I hopped in, calculating what would be a safe distance from my actual location.
“55 Freeton Avenue,” I said, figuring that’d drop me a couple of blocks from 102. The cabbie nodded and gunned the engine. I settled into my seat, glad to see he didn’t appear to be much for small talk.
Even with barely any traffic, it took about thirty minutes to reach my destination: a grim street of dingy office buildings and warehouses not all that far from the mall where I’d met Scarlett. When the driver stopped outside number 55, a medical supply outlet store that was obviously closed, he gave me a skeptical glance over his shoulder. “Are you sure this is the right place?”
I smiled brightly at him. “This is it.” Then I handed him enough cash to cover twice the amount on the meter. He didn’t complain after that.
I watched him drive off and then set off toward 102, crossing the street and sticking close to the fronts of the buildings. Half of the streetlamps were broken or burned out, which made keeping to the shadows easier. When I reached the right address, I slowed, studying the building.
It was a little smaller than the others, squat and windowless other than a small pane of glass next to the door. The grout between the bricks was crumbling. No sign hung over the door to suggest what purpose the place served.
I slunk over and tested the front door handle tentatively, careful to stay silent. It resisted my hand, locked. That was fine. The men hadn’t looked as if they were going somewhere they expected to be met with open arms.
Had they even gotten here already, or had I managed to beat them to it? Maybe they’d made another stop on the way.
For all I knew, they weren’t coming here tonight at all and this was a target for later. It might be even better if I could poke around uninterrupted.
Slipping around to the back of the building, I found another regular door as well as a garage-style one, which suggested this was some kind of shipping warehouse. Both were closed, a tiny window in between them pasted over with faded newspaper. Whatever the place was used for, it didn’t look as if it was used very much.
What could it have to do with the household? Or was it really part of some other case?
I worried my lower lip under my teeth for a moment and then tried the back door. To my surprise, that handle turned in my grasp.
Just as I nudged the door open, the muffled bangs of a pistol with a silencer reached my ears.
My pulse jumped. Someone was here, all right, and they weren’t happy. Were the cops in there shooting at someone or having criminals shoot at them?
The murderers I’d been searching for might be right here in front of me.
Along with my body’s innate apprehension about walking into danger, a thrill of adrenaline coursed through my veins. I stepped into the short, dark hall on the other side of the door, my gaze fixing on the streaks of light showing around a corner just up ahead. Grunts, moans, and more gunfire reached my ears from the room beyond my view.
I’d recognize those noises anywhere. Men were dying over there.
I darted toward the sounds with a growing sense of protectiveness. If the bastards who’d mowed down everyone in the household were trying to slaughter my men now too, I’d make them doubly regret everything they’d done. Hopefully I could get my hands on a better weapon than Talon’s knitting needle first.
When I peeked around the bend, all I could make out were a couple of shipping crates at this end of what appeared to be a much larger room, illuminated by thin yellow light. The lids of the crates had been popped off haphazardly, them and a few crumpled beer cans lay on the floor near the wall. Holding my breath, I dashed behind the nearest crate, dodging the debris, and peered around it to get my first real look at the scene.
It was nothing like I’d anticipated.
Blood splattered every wall—every possible surface in the main warehouse room. Bodies slumped on the floor and against a table heaped with bulging baggies—some kind of drug operation, from the looks of it. Figures moved through the darker areas around the edges of the room.
One of the bodies wasn’t a corpse quite yet. The fallen man groped for a gun that’d fallen a few feet from his hand, and another bullet slammed into his skull, making him crumple. Blood was already flowing from a wound across his wrist, staining the cement floor red.
Why would you shoot someone in the wrist first and not the head to begin with?
My gaze caught on one of the figures circling the room, and a jolt of recognition shot through me. I’d have known the graceful, deadly way Talon moved anywhere. His honed brutality had drawn my attention from the first moment I’d met him, and I’d only become more familiar with it in our various sorts of sparring.
Before my eyes, he lunged behind a delivery truck parked at the side of the room and hauled out a guy who’d been crouched there. A curved knife gleamed in his other hand. Without hesitation, Talon plunged the blade into the man’s chest, jerking it upward in a zigzag motion that sent even more blood spraying across the side of the truck.
My eyes stayed glued to the slash as he tossed the guy aside to crumple on the floor. That jagged line across the throat and upper chest… I’d never seen anyone make a kill like that. But I had seen a matching wound.
My stomach lurched. I yanked my gaze away to scan the other bodies with sharper attention.
It wasn’t just that corpse, or the one who’d taken a shot to his wrist that’d opened his artery. I spotted two other men who’d gotten Talon’s knife treatment, and another who’d been shot across the forearm in just the right way. Others were sprawled in positions that hid their wounds, but from the amount of blood all over this place, letting off a meaty stench into the stuffy air, every kill had been carried out by a meticulous plan to maximize the gore.
It was brutal.