Page 27

27

Roman

S omething in the air made his hackles rise.

Roman silently moved along the long concrete building, just as Tomas and his crew would be keeping an eye out on the other side. Behind him was Arturo and his contingent, following the trail he carved through the heavy brush. They were close to the door, a few feet away at most.

They’d played looky-loo for hours, but no one had gone in—and no one had gone out. If Roman didn’t know better, he’d say it was abandoned. A big place like this out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by a dense forest with only a small access road? It was easy enough for it to be forgotten about.

But that smell…

He wondered whether any of them could detect it. Most people couldn’t, but then most people weren’t in Roman’s line of work.

It smelled like spilled blood left to congeal into a thick, viscous mass.

Corpses didn’t smell immediately. The stink of death would take hours to sink its teeth in, but the scent in the air right now? That was death at its freshest, mingling with something fouler that might have been human waste.

His gaze on the vent beside him, Roman paused, holding out a hand to stop the masculine mountain crouching low behind him. And there’s the source. “You smell that?”

Arturo’s nostrils flared as he inhaled. “No?”

He nodded down at the vent—or, more precisely, the reddish-black trail of dried blood leaking from it. “There’s a body in there. A relatively fresh one.”

Those dark eyes widened, but Roman saw no doubt in them.

He knew what Arturo was thinking. In their line of work, corpses rarely popped up by themselves. When there was a body, its murderer was never too far behind; a fact Roman was exceedingly familiar with.

“Guns out.” Arturo’s command was gruff, his jaw locking in place as he looked at the Silvas members behind them.

“Keep those blinkers bared.” Roman winked, palming his gun as he inched towards the structure, carefully picking out a path. The temperature of the air dropped as he crossed the threshold. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but at first glance it was empty.

Bare cinderblocks and inches of dust greeted him. A desk had been haphazardly shoved in a corner with wooden chairs lying shattered on the ground—adding to the endless paper carpeting the ground. The only sign of life was the weeds created beneath dripping pipes, tiny little ecosystems that, if Arturo and Tomas were correct, had witnessed the dregs of humanity: human trafficking.

Roman held his gun tight in his hand, locking it in place as he entered the next room. It was larger than the first, by far, but empty—save for the corpse lying facedown in a blanket of thick, glutinous blood. The bridge of his nose wrinkled, but it wasn’t only the smell of death that lingered here.

Buckets were lined on the far wall, near a row of steel eye plates drilled into the cinderblocks. Short, thick chains were tethered to the plates, snaking along the floor near an upended bucket.

“Huh.” Arturo stepped into the room behind him. “Guess you were right about the corpse.”

“You shouldn’t sound surprised,” Roman told him cheerily. “I’m always right about corpses.” More of Arturo’s men began to pour into the room, each giving it a searching look.

Roman decided that he’d do the introductions, making his way over to the corpse. If the man’s brains hadn’t been artfully decorating the wall behind him like sprinkles on a cupcake, Roman would have been ever-so-slightly more cautious. As it was, though, the entire back half of the man’s skull was missing. There was no faking that. The guy was either dead or he was a medical miracle.

A frown lowered his brow when he saw a short, black lanyard hanging from the man’s belt, stuffed with a suspicious amount of keys for a building with only one door. “Those chains,” he said to the nearest cartel member. “Are they unlocked?”

The man dodged the puddle on the floor to get a closer look, moving along the eye walls. “Looks like it. All of them.”

Well then.

Arturo gave a hmph , reaching over to unclip the lanyard before tossing it over to one of his men. “See if that unlocks any of the chains,” he called, before turning his attention back to Roman. “What d’you reckon? This guy was running things out here?”

“Sounds about right.” Roman nodded. “But I think we better take a lesson from our new friend here, and keep an open mind .”

Arturo rolled his eyes.

When his comedic genius went unrecognised, Roman yanked the corpse out of his congealed pit and turned him over, the leather of his gloves creaking. The blood had pooled beneath the skin of the man’s nose and lips, but recognition made him recoil.

Arturo looked over to him. “You know him?”

“We’ve unlocked one, boss,” one of Arturo’s men called, as Roman wracked his brain to remember where he knew the dead man from. “The keys are for the chains.”

The memory pounced into his head a moment later. Roman had stood next to him on a summer’s evening overlooking the sea. He was a high-ranking Syndicate member at Bri and Aldous’s wedding. Chavez. “Fuck. Yeah, I know him. You said this building was being used for human trafficking?”

Arturo gave him a nod.

“It’s not the Wraiths operating it,” Roman explained, the implications hitting him like a barrage of arrows. “It’s the fucking Syndicate.”

Was this why the Syndicate had been hit so hard in recent months? Because they’d sunk their fingers into much more volatile pies?

And Aldous and Bri were still tangled up in it.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Arturo’s eyes were piercing.

Roman frantically pulled his phone out. He needed to speak to Koa; the one person with access to high-level knowledge about the Syndicate that he actually trusted. And Koa, of all people, wouldn’t facilitate human trafficking.

…would he? Surely Roman couldn’t have been so wrong about one of his oldest friends.

As soon as the screen flashed on, dread coiled inside him like a snake waiting to strike.

SeizWatch: Seizure Detected 221 Minutes Ago

Is she with you?

Aldous

Pick up your fucking phone

Aldous

ANSWER ME, you mouthy gobshite

Aldous

“Fuck,” he swore, seeing the eighteen missed calls from Aldous beneath it. He pressed it to return one of them, holding the phone to his ear. “Bri’s had another seiz—” he began saying to Arturo.

Aldous picked up on the first ring. “Is she with you?” he demanded, not bothering with a hello.

“No. I’m with Arturo and Tomas. She was supposed to be going out with Reina.”

“For lunch. That was fucking hours ago. I just got home from work and she’s not here. Bri isn’t picking up, and neither is Reina. Or Koa, for that matter. Their phones are all dead. They don’t even ring.”

That dread was perilously close to striking a fatal blow. “Then…” Roman croaked, lost for words. “Then where is she?”