It was utter chaos, perfectly constructed to achieve that effect.
And I’d stumbled on a scene so very much like it just days ago.
One last guy made a dash toward the other end of the room, and Blaze stepped into view, the jaundiced light turning his pale red hair orange. He raised his gun and shot the wannabe escapee in the face.
A satisfied smile crossed his lips. He’d pulled off the kill as if he did it every day before breakfast, just for fun.
Who the hell were these men who’d dragged me into their lives? What kind of cops would take down a drug operation like this? Shouldn’t they… shouldn’t they only shoot people in self-defense? Where were the handcuffs and the announcements of people’s rights? Didn’t they want to, like, question any of them or something?
No. This was all very, very wrong.
The groans and the gunshots faded from my ears. I’d arrived at the tail end of the massacre, and it appeared to be finished. The silence that descended over the room turned the thump of my heartbeat in my ears almost deafening.
Garrison ambled out of the shadows, bending to check the bodies and pull wallets, phones, and weapons from their pockets. I’d seen the results of his meticulousness in the past too. He glanced over his shoulder, and Julius strode out to where the lights were brighter, just tucking his gun into its holster under his arm.
“I thought they’d put up more of a fight,” Garrison remarked, tossing another phone into the plastic sack he was carrying.
“Drug dealers are sitting ducks most of the time,” Julius said, just as casually. He swiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Despite all the blood around me, the four men had managed to stay impressively clean. I noted only a few flecks on Julius’s shirt and one splash on Talon’s, which he was already peeling off.
He tossed it into Garrison’s bag. “Are we done here?”
“Just got to take a few more pictures,” Blaze announced. He was patrolling the room in his usual energetic way, now snapping photos with his phone.
A sickening certainty coiled around my stomach. These men weren’t any kind of cops. They were outright killers.
And this wasn’t the first kill scene of theirs I’d witnessed.
At the household—those zigzag cuts, the clipped arteries, the spectacle of blood… I’d never seen it before, and I hadn’t again until right now.
There was no way it could be a coincidence. Julius and his gang had slaughtered everyone in the household and then tracked me down and taken me… as some kind of prize? To toy with me for fun while they decided what to do with me next?
That part didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t wrap my head around why they’d have brought me into their lives the way they had. They would have just shot or stabbed me at the scene of my car accident.
But who the hell knew what went through their heads? I’d had no idea who these guys were, so I couldn’t go by my original impressions.
I’d come here hoping I’d get a clue about who’d destroyed the household, and I’d gotten a hell of a lot more than that, so much that I didn’t have any idea what to think. My head was spinning.
I drew back behind the crate. It was all right. I couldn’t take them on here, with no real weapons and no preparation—but I knew where they lived. I knew how they worked. I could sneak back there and lie in wait for when they returned…
But the unexpected revelation had set me more off-balance than I’d realized. As I backed toward the hall, preparing to make my escape, my heel smacked one of the beer cans I’d forgotten to watch out for.
It rattled across the floor into the wall, and footsteps pounded toward me in an instant. I bolted for the hallway, bracing for a shot—
The footsteps stopped. “Dess?”
I should have kept running. But the sound of Julius’s commanding voice was so familiar, so normal, that I couldn’t help spinning around as I reached the hall. Tucking myself around the corner so my body was shielded, I stared at him, wondering what he could possibly plan on saying to me.
He was holding his gun, but he’d lowered it to his side. Talon, coming up beside him, had dropped his weapon too. They both looked utterly shocked—even… horrified? A lot more upset than they’d been about the actual horror they’d just carried out.
I wanted to vomit. My lips clamped shut against the urge.
“How did you—” Julius cut himself off with a shake of his head. He glanced behind him and winced as he turned back to me. “Let me explain. I know it looks bad, but—”
Looks bad? An incredulous guffaw tumbled out of me. “You killed them,” I snapped. “You killed Anna.”
And then, because my brain had finally started working again, I whipped around and pelted toward the back door.
Julius hollered my name. Shoes scraped against the concrete floor behind me. But I rammed the back door open and sprinted down the alley, rounding the corner onto the sidewalk before I even heard the squeak of the door opening again behind me.