Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66697 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66697 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Mercy’s hands stilled against the burr in the metal. For a second, something moved behind her flat eyes, some crack in the wall she’d built to survive this place. Then it was gone, tucked away again, because feelings were a luxury neither of us could afford right now.
“Sit up,” she said. “Slow. There are cameras in the corners, but the angle’s bad near the table. Blind spot.”
I pushed myself upright, biting back a groan when my shoulder screamed at me. My head swam for a second, the drug still working its way out of my system, and I breathed through it until the room stopped tilting.
“You said you’ve been here before,” Mercy said. “You got out?”
“Yeah. Now, we’re gonna get out again.”
The corner of her lips ticked up. “You keep saying ‘we’ like you’ve got a plan.”
“I’ve got half of one.” I turned my wrists toward the table leg she’d found, angling myself along the floor to reach it.
The door at the far end opened before either of us made real progress. A thin guard in a jacket too big in the shoulders, stood in the frame with a phone against his ear, nodding at something. He didn’t look at us like we were people. He looked at us like we were lab animals in a cage.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, she’s here.” A pause. “He said to bring her up special. Not banged around, not sedated more than she already is. Boss wants her clean when she gets there.” Another pause, and his gaze slid to me for half a second, assessing, filing. “Yeah. Be there in fifteen.”
He hung up and left without another word, the door swinging shut behind him. The clock he’d just set ticked loud in my skull. Fifteen minutes to get me somewhere. Somewhere that wasn’t here, which meant somewhere worse, which meant I didn’t have fifteen minutes at all. I had way the fuck less.
“That was for you,” Mercy said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yep.” I went back to the tie, sawing it against the burred edge with more vigor, feeling more give in the plastic now.
Mercy’s own hands stilled. She was listening to something I couldn’t hear yet, head tilted toward the corridor. “Rotation’s off,” she whispered. “That guard should’ve had someone with him. He didn’t.”
Then I heard it too. A single flat crack, far off, muffled by walls and distance but unmistakable. Gunfire. Then another, and another, quick and overlapping, coming from somewhere toward the loading bay.
Boots. A lot of them, moving fast, farther down the building, away from us, toward the noise. Someone shouted something I couldn’t make out. The rotation Mercy had memorized down to the minute broke apart in real time while we listened from the confines of this shitty room. Heavy boots filed down the hall past us, men shouting the whole way with overlapping conversations. Whatever was happening at the loading bay mattered more to them right now than two women tied up in an intake room.
I gave a soft cry as I finally managed to get my wrists free. The tie gave with a small sharp snap, plastic biting one last groove into my skin before it let go.
The door opened again almost the second my hands came free. Same guard, gun still holstered because he hadn’t expected trouble from his “cargo,” moved fast toward Mercy first since she was closer to the door.
I didn’t think. I came up off the floor and drove my good shoulder into his back before he’d fully cleared the frame. Pain exploded through my other shoulder and I couldn’t stop the cry that exploded from me. Mercy was already moving, her own hands free, both of us on him before he could turn his weight into anything useful. Even though I couldn’t do much more than wrap my legs round his and tangle the bastard up, the fight was fast and ugly. Mercy kicked his head. When he flipped to his back to defend himself, she stomped his throat twice as hard as she could. He thrashed a couple seconds before he stilled, his windpipe crushed.
I pried the gun from his holster and stood there over him with the weight of it heavy and familiar in my hand.
Mercy gave me a crisp nod. “We doing this now?”
“I mean, what have we really got to lose?”
“You know the best way?”
“Left,” I said, already moving into the corridor. “This hall runs past three holding rooms before it leads toward the stairs and splits toward the main floor. I’ve been through it.”
“We’re on the same page.” She grinned at me, then we headed out. Mercy fell in behind me, quiet and quick, her bare feet silent on the tile where I still had shoes. Once we made it to the ground floor we moved toward the bigger bay area the exit. Gunfire kept rolling in from the direction of the loading bay, farther off now, punctuated by shouting that sounded like someone was getting an ass kicking.