Page 68 of Gator
He let that sit there for a second and finally nodded. “Good enough. Let’s move. I’ll be in constant communication with Kat, and I’ll update you as soon as we have a set location.”
My adrenaline was pumping, and my heart was thumping. The most important thing was to get Julius back, but now that we had a plan, my fury was building. It burned in my gut and had begun to replace the fear I felt for my boy with the need to hurt whoever had dared to take him. They had better pray they hadn’t hurt a single hair on his head because if they had, they wouldn’t be walking out of there alive.
I had one thought running on repeat in my head.Find Julius. Make them pay.
Chapter twenty-one
Julius
We’d been driving for what seemed like forever, each turn bleeding into the next until I couldn’t tell if we were circling or heading somewhere new. The windows stayed dark, the driver silent except for the occasional grunt at a traffic light. I kept my hands laced in my lap like he’d ordered, but my nails dug crescents into my palms. I wanted to glance out, to find a landmark, but the man beside me was watching my every move, so I stared straight ahead and breathed slowly, like I was back in yoga class, like breath could somehow hold me together.
The car turned off the main road and bumped down a gravel drive. Porch lights glowed ahead, soft yellow against clapboard siding. It looked like any other farmhouse in West Texas, the kind with a porch swing and flower boxes, except the windowswere blacked out and the blinds drawn tight. AFor Salesign leaned face down in the weeds.
“Out.” The man beside me motioned towards the door with one hand and lifted his jacket just enough for me to glimpse the gun tucked inside. A reminder, like I’d forgotten he had it.
My legs were stiff and shaky as he hustled me across the gravel driveway, up the steps onto the porch, and inside the house. The front room was basically empty aside from a few folding chairs and a card table. A big man sat at the table with a laptop open in front of him, the glow making his face ghostly.
“This him?” the man asked without looking up.
Asshole rolled his eyes. “Of course it is, Charlie. I didn’t just grab some rando off the street.”
Charlie ignored the comment, typed something into the computer, and waved his hand dismissively. “Put him in the basement with the others.”
Asshole jerked my arm and pulled me down the hallway to a door locked with a thick padlock. He pulled out a set of keys, metal clinking in his hand, and opened the lock. Then he gave me a rough shove. “Get down there.”
I barely managed to catch myself before plunging down the narrow wooden stairs. Basements weren’t common around here because of the limestone, but this house had one, and God help me, it felt like I was walking straight into a grave.
The stairs creaked under our weight as we made our way down. At the bottom, a bare bulb buzzed and cast shadows against concrete walls. The air was cooler, damper, which wasn’t a good thing since I didn’t have a jacket. It smelled like mildew and sewage mixed with unwashed bodies. The odor was so strong it made my eyes water.
Bare mattresses lined the floor. Two women sat cross-legged on one, arms wrapped around each other. Another figure lay curled on his side, his back to me, shoulders trembling. A few others were there as well, but they were so still I couldn’t tell if they were alive. My throat tightened. All these people. All these lives.
I scanned the room, my heart in my throat, but I didn’t see Lainey anywhere. I hoped that meant they hadn’t taken her at all, not that she was being held elsewhere.
I did see someone I recognized, though. The man from the club. His hair was longer now, falling into his eyes, and his cheek was bruised, but I knew that face. Recognition sparked in his gaze as he lifted his head.
“I saw you. At the club the night they took me.” His voice was raw, hoarse, like it had been sanded down.
Relief and horror tangled inside me. “Yeah. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t.”
“Quiet,” Asshole barked from behind me, giving me a shove toward an empty mattress against the far wall. “Sit.”
I obeyed, lowering myself to the pad. My hands shook, but I tucked them beneath my thighs. Across the dim basement, the man from the club pressed his back to the wall, his gaze fixed on me, steady despite the bruise.
I wanted to tell him everything. That Gator was coming, that I had trackers on me, that we weren’t alone, but I couldn’t. Not yet. So I did the only thing I could. I met his gaze and gave the smallest nod. A promise.
The padlock clanged into place at the top of the stairs. Footsteps receded overhead.
The two women whispered to each other in what sounded like Spanish, and the curled figure whimpered once, then went still again.
“Can they hear us?” I murmured. It didn’t look like a sophisticated operation—no cameras, no obvious mics—but I wasn’t sure.
The man from the club shook his head and crawled over to where I sat, then dropped down on the mattress next to me. “No. At least not that we can tell.” His gaze darted up the stairs, then back at me.
“Your name’s Noah, right?”
“How did you know?” he whispered.
“We’ve been looking for you ever since they took you.”