27
Tywin
Eight fucking days.
I clicked my phone on before the first ring fully sounded. “What’s up, Rhi?”
“I believe I have something,” he replied and the tone in his voice was one of hope.
“What do you have?” I made no attempt to hide the desperation in my tone.
“I was able to place one of the faces I saw at Patrena’s accident site at a government building on the outskirts of the city.”
That bit of information got my attention. “Are you sure?” I inquired in a whisper, praying this lead would direct us to where they had taken Patrena.
“I’m sure. Same face, different location. Took me for fucking ever, but it’s a good lead. I’m sending you the building’s blueprints, and I’m already working on a way to take control of anything inside the building. The place is heavily guarded. These people definitely have something to hide.”
“Thanks, Rhi. I’m on my way.”
“Are you bringing your cousins in on this since they have eaten through the men that helped their father like ants through sugar?”
I chuckled. “Yes. If this lead pans out, it could mean a lot of death and destruction on our part. They are in destroy mode and would never forgive me if I left them out. I’ll see you in a bit.”
I didn’t even want to think of what may have been happening to Patrena in all this time. We had chased three other leads, so far, and they had all led to dead ends. Therefore, I didn’t want to get my hopes up until I reviewed the evidence Rhi had found. Had he found the link that would lead us to Patrena this time?
After I had joined Rhi at our warehouse, we spent hours scanning surveillance footage to solidify the link he’d made. I couldn’t wipe the silly smile off my face at the notion that Patrena could have been inside that building.
The lead was promising enough that we had made it official and dispersed the information out to our team, alerting that we would be putting together a rescue mission.
“I’m in their network and can confirm that your girl is there,” Rhi blurted, but never took his gaze away from the screen. I stood, easing from my chair with my tunnel vision aimed at him.
“Rhi,” I called out to get his attention, making him put his eyes on mine.
“Are you confirming without any doubt that Patrena is inside that building?”
He nodded and a wide smile broke out on his face. “Although I still can’t get a visual, I can confirm, based on reports I’ve found, she is there.”
My eyes fell closed and all I could do was breath sweet relief. I had so many prayers rolling through my brain, it took Rhi throwing a book at me to get my attention. The stressed look on his face was taking back all that relief I had just inhaled.
The screen in front of him had reclaimed his attention. I eased into the seat next to him like being careful would make whatever update he was about to give less devastating.
“These are some vicious motherfuckers. The first ten levels have at least two, armed security guards on each floor. This is also where the largest concentration of workers are located. Those workers are mostly data miners and harmless. The top floors, eleven to twenty, have about fifty workers scattered throughout and are dedicated to all manner of torture and interrogation. There’s top-secret spy equipment, living quarters, even a pharmacy. This group is into cutting people into pieces and burning the remains to get what they want.”
My eyes fell closed and I prayed that Patrena hadn’t been subjected to any of their madness. Beats from a drumline was no match for the amount of ruckus my heart was kicking up at that update.
“Based on what I’ve found, she’s their only female patient.”
“Is she—”
“Pretty Freckles is fine,” Rhi answered before I posed the question. “They document their dead, and so far, all of the names on the list in the past month have been men.
At that update, I began to breathe again and the image of me killing every last person in that building surfaced.
* * *
The soundof my phone buzzing had me jumping up with a quick jerk. I had fallen asleep at the warehouse. After Rhi’s confirmation, we had called in our team and started plotting our mission. After Rhi and the team had called it a night, I was too amped up to stop working.
“Hello,” I answered, picking up my phone with a deep frown and not bothering to see who it was.