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I glance back at the house just as the flames reach the sky, engulfing the structure completely.
27
Special Agent Fallon Baxter
An inferno rides into the sky as the house they call Nightshade succumbs to the flames.
I stumble in that direction as if in a trance and note the south end of the structure has yet to catch fire. A small window sits above the ground and I run that way.
“Baxter, wait,” someone shouts, and soon Jack is on my heels. “He said you’d need these.” He holds up a set of keys. “Master key. He had them in his pocket.”
I go to grab them and Jack hikes them out of reach.
“The hell I’m going to let you go in there.” He charges past me and takes the window right off its hinge. Smoke curls from inside and I push Jack aside, snatch the keys, and slip through the narrow opening.
“Erin,” I shout into the dark as a beam of light hits me from above.
“My phone, take it,” Jack shouts and I’m quick to grab it and turn on the flashlight. “This way,” he shouts to someone from over his shoulder. “We need help. We’ve got people down here,” he says before dropping into the chute behind me.
“Erin?” I cry so loud my voice rubs raw.
A series of dark corridors opens up and we hear the sound of muffled cries.
“There’s someone here,” I pant and we race in the direction of the screams of misery until they get increasingly louder.
Soon, two more men are on our heels, both wearing vests with the letters FBI emblazoned on them, and we tackle each door we find and each one has a cage with a girl in it.
I fumble with the keys and run from room to room, never getting a good look at the women slumped in the corners of those cells. My only worry is to open the doors to them all.
A swarm of agents helps hoist the women one by one into the hall, and by that time there’s a ladder leading up to the window where a man dressed in black helps to pull them all to safety. And I think I recognize the man in black as Jack’s brother, Jet. It’s odd, but my mind is racing far too fast to ask any questions.
“That’s it,” Jack shouts as the smoke begins to build. “The rooms are empty. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Erin,” I shout, scanning the crowd of panicked girls as they make their way above ground.
A horrific roar erupts to our left as a part of the ceiling comes down, spilling a sea of fiery embers into the room.
“Everybody out, now,” Jack thunders, and soon the girls are evacuated out of the vicinity, then myself, then Jack who insists on being last.
I get up from my knees and I stagger toward two of the girls I helped rescue. “Erin, did you see Erin?” My voice wavers at the two women before me, thin as rails, one has bruises on the right side of her face that look recent. “She went by Angel.”
“We know Angel,” the taller of the two says. “I’m Kim and this is Trish,” she says, nodding to her friend. “We were trapped down there with her. She didn’t know why she was there.”
Trish, the girl with the bruises, nods. “She didn’t know why she was being punished.”
“I know exactly why she was being punished,” I pant. “He knew who she was. Help me find her. Please.”
“Anything for you,” Kim says. “But promise you’ll make sure we get out of this hellhole.”
“That’s as good as done.”
Jack tosses a warm dress shirt over me and I’m quickly apprised it’s his own.
We comb the grounds as best we can in search of my sister, but we come up empty.
“Erin?” I cry one more time in frustration before falling to my knees.
She never comes back.
