Carefully, Reacher stepped out from the middle of the room. Tommy opened the drawer the rest of the way, and we all watched as a section of the floor slid under the wood panels on the left to reveal a concrete staircase.
“I hate this guy,” Aloiki muttered before he charged forward.
I was right on his heels. Motion-sensor lights flicked on, illuminating our descent. The others followed, though I heard Spirit say he’d remain up top to stand guard. I didn’t argue. Last thing we needed was to get trapped down here too.
Wherever here was.
At the bottom of the stairs was a hallway that looked very similar to the floors above. It was eerie, like it was just another, normal floor of this pompous house, complete with marble busts and watercolor paintings.
Several doors lined the hall. I saw Aloiki take a step towards the first one when a door in the middle on the left opened. On instinct, I pulled my gun from the small of my back and raised it with my finger on the trigger, until I saw who exited into the hallway.
It was a woman. She was young—far too young for my heart to skip a beat or my cock to twitch in my pants at the sight of her. Maybe it was her petite stature, but I doubted she was older than sixteen. Maybe seventeen. Though she was as Caucasian as Reaper, her hair was styled in a traditional Japanese updo and she wore a tealkimonowith each sleeve rolled up by atasuki. Her gaze cast down at hergetaclogs, blocking me from seeing the color of her eyes.
There was no doubt in my mind that they were as breathtaking as she was.
“Mr. Dalton-Jones, sir, please, she needs a doctor. I cannot—”She glanced up for just a second, and when she saw it was us standing before her, she screamed.
She ran back inside the room she came from and slammed the door closed.
“Fuck!” Aloiki shouted and bolted after her.
It shouldn’t have taken me an extra second to follow, but it did. I wasn’t as opposed to wearing slippahs, or shoes, as Aloiki was, but all of a sudden it felt like I was wearing lead ones. Why couldn’t my legs move properly? It did not surprise me that Aloiki was able to burst right inside without any resistance. Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV would not want his prisoners to find a way to keep him out, and if the doors locked, it was likely only from the outside.
Anger hit me like a wave when I saw the girl sprawled on the floor in front of Aloiki, like she’d been trying to use her own bodyweight to barricade the door when he’d pushed his way through.
Shuffling quickly to her feet, she rushed to the back corner of the room where another girl—this one much younger at three or four years old—was playing with a doll on the floor. She scooped the girl up, turning her body to create a physical shield between us and the child.
Fuck. My stomach sank, and I quickly checked my gun. I carried a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum. It was an impressive weapon, in both size and weight. But I was a big guy with big hands, and many other handguns did not feel steady in my grip.
Aloiki put his hands up, showing he was unarmed. He’d never unsheathed his knife from his thigh holster. Despite modern warfare, Aloiki had a preference for fighting barehanded and barefooted, as many of our ancestors did. “It’s okay.” He tried to assure the woman. “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here for…”
His voice trailed off as he spotted the other occupant in the room. As he turned his head, so did mine.
I’d seen a lot of shit in my life. I was no pussy that was squeamishat the sight of blood, and yet my stomach turned so viscerally that, for a moment, I thought I was going to lose the meager breakfast I ate on the plane.
Behind the door was a small cot made for a child. Bandages, cleaning supplies, and gauze lay on the floor beside the bed. One of the bottles was open as if it had been in use when we’d come down the stairs. Dried and wet blood was everywhere, staining the pink teddy bears stenciled on the walls and the short, pink dresser at the head of the bed.
Laying there, her back flayed open to the point where bone protruded from her torn flesh, was Nishi.
“A‘e Akua.”I could barely breathe around the prayer. I wasn’t the only one frozen at the sight. Even from my place in the doorway, the scent of copper was heavy in the air. As were other more foul smells that I chose not to identify out of respect for Nishi.
My chest felt heavy as tears stung my eyes. I was no saint. I’d done a lot of shit in my time, a lot of which I could spend the rest of my life behind bars or placed in front of a firing squad for, so it was probably a good thing Hawai‘i abolished the death penalty in 1957. Butthis?I didn’t need to be a doctor to know that Nishi was not going to see home again.
A monster lived in these walls, and no amount of torture, no painful end, would ever make up for or set right what he’d done here.
“Tommy!” Aloiki’s dead voice brought me back to the present. I stepped out of the way so the former soldier could come forward. He carried a small amount of medical supplies on him.
“Stop!” the teenager shouted. “Don’t hurt her!”
I caught Aloiki’s eye over his shoulder. The pain I saw there was beyond measure, because he knew what I did. No words needed to be spoken for me to know what he wanted.
I approached the woman, or teenager, slowly with my hands raised. The room was not large, so it only took a few steps before I was directly in front of her. I left a small distance between us, not wanting her to feel crowded by my large build. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, while I was nearly three times her size. Staring down at her, I felt something shift inside me.
It was primal, possessive, and passionate. I felt centered, powerful, and yet entirely weak, like those sea-green eyes staring back at me had the ability to control my very being.
She truly was exquisite. Even under the traditional Japanese attire, I could tell she was thin. Not emaciated, but there certainly was a lack of meat on her bones. Like she got three square meals a day and nothing more. Beyond her absolute fear and pain screaming from the depths of those incredible eyes, I saw determination. And I knew in that moment that there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect the child she carried in her arms. The dusting of freckles across her nose shined with her tears, and it broke something inside me.
I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know whose child she held or the horrors she’d faced in this depraved house. I had no idea where she was from or who was missing her. But in that moment, when our eyes met for the very first time, I knew three things without question or contention.