He shuts up.
The files he didn't finish shredding are still on the desk. Manila folders, a stack of them.Later.
"Leave him," I tell Mira. "He's not going anywhere."
She looks at the rolling chair. Then at me. One eyebrow. "Let's hope not."
"Don't you dare leave me—" Walsh is still shouting when we close the door.
Xander passes us, heading for the stairs. "Getting Doc. Don't have all the fun without me."
Static crackle in my earpiece. Then Kade's voice, live and direct.
"Blade. Sitrep. Now."
"Six hostiles, not four. Four neutralized. Nitro down, two to the plate, conscious. Vega and Park walking wounded. Walsh secured. Still clearing."
Silence. Then: "Copy." A pause. "Come home."
"One more door. Southeast corner. Closing now."
Damian comes up the east staircase and falls in without a word, weapon up. Ground floor locked down, time to finish it. Three of us converging on the last door at the end of the hallway. This one is different from the others. The deadbolt is on the outside. A padlock hangs from a hasp welded to the frame, heavy and industrial.
Deadbolt on the outside. Padlock. This isn't storage.
"Reaper, on me. Siren, watch the hall."
I position on the left of the frame. Damian takes the right. Mira turns to cover the way we came.
I look at Damian. He nods once.
He shoots the padlock. Kicks the deadbolt free.
The door opens.
Dark. One bulb overhead, barely working, throwing a circle of weak yellow that doesn't reach the corners. The smell is everything from the hallway compressed into a room with no windows and no ventilation. Unwashed bodies, urine, bucket toilets left for days, and underneath it all that chemical sweetness, thick enough to coat my tongue.
Mattresses on the floor. Thin, stained, laid in rows with barely a foot between them. Chains bolted to the concrete beside each one. Short chains with small cuffs, sized for wrists that couldn't fight back.
Something behind my ribs clenches hard enough to hurt and I breathe through it the way I breathe through a hit.
Seventeen people. Not eight. Thermal was wrong because they were packed so tight the signatures bled together on the screen. Fourteen women and three children, pressed against the far wall, blinking in the hallway light behind me. Some shield their eyes. Some are too tired to move.
And one more figure. Not a victim.
Young man, mid-twenties, backed into the far corner. Pistol pressed against the temple of a teenage girl he's pulled in front of him, one arm locked across her chest. His hand shaking so badly the barrel clicks against her skull with every tremor. Cornered, sweat soaking through his shirt, eyes darting between me and Damian and the door.
"Suéltame o la mato."Let me go or I kill her.His voice cracks.
The girl is frozen. Eyes wide, breathing in quick shallow pulls, not making a sound. An older woman behind her has bothhands pressed over her own mouth, holding in the scream that would get someone killed.
My weapon is up. Clean angle to the head, but his finger's inside the trigger guard and his whole arm is shaking.
"Blade." Damian beside me. Low, waiting for my call.
Behind the cluster of women, pressed between two bodies trying to shield her, a little girl is watching me through the gap. Dark hair tangled around her face. Maybe seven years old. Eyes too old for her face.
If I shoot, he shoots.