Page 88 of Kyle

Maybe I should’ve felt differently, and maybe a few months ago I would’ve, but I’d had quite the education since Kalee had died. Since I’d huddled in a closet praying the rebels wouldn’t find me as I heard them senselessly torture and kill the villagers. Since the rebels had killed innocent children in an orphanage. Since I’d been taken and for the second time in my life chained to a wall.

Now I felt no pity.

Chapter 26

“Total shitstorm,” Leo muttered.

He was not wrong.

The two of us had taken patrol on the south end of the compound where the girls were being held and what we found wasn’t what’d been reported.

It looked like a tent-city in the middle of an unused pasture.

“I counted seventeen being hosed off,” I told him—something he already knew. I was sure he’d counted the girls as they were dragged from the tents, forced to undress, then hosed off like animals.

The women had flinched and cried out as the undoubtedly ice-cold water had pelted their flesh, making my trigger finger itchy. Dropping a few of the men as they laughed at the women would do the soul so good. Yet I remained still and watched.

Seventeen women we could see. Maybe more in the tents. More than had been reported.

Ten guards. Again, that we could see.

There were nine of us, we could easily take out ten men. But the issue was, the property was in the middle of a small town. The sound of automatic gunfire would draw attention, and lots of it.

The other issue was, the compound wasn’t exactly hidden.

“There has to be more. The guard ratio is too high. And I don’t like how we can’t see into the house.”

“Panther, what’s your six?” Linc came over the radio asking our position.

“Southeast corner,” Leo returned.

“We’re headed your way.”

Lincoln and Colin had taken the north end of the property. Jasmin, Declan, Max, Thad, and Brooks had paired off to scout the town.

Leo and I went back to silently watching when two men and a girl exited the house, a man on each side of her holding her by the arms. They dragged her limp body through the yard toward the tents. Anger and bile rose fast and furious.

“Easy,” Leo growled from beside me.

He may’ve mumbled more words in an attempt to calm me down but my focus was on the girl’s bare feet as they towed behind her.

The depravity never failed to boil my insides.

“Two more guards,” Leo noted.

Two more dead men walking was more like it.

Two more motherfuckers I’d feel no remorse for when my bullet hit them square between the eyes.

* * *

Leo, Colin, Linc, and I made it back to the safehouse and were waiting for the rest of the team to get back from checking out the town.

The other three men were lounging on the couch but I couldn’t get my racing thoughts to settle. That girl being hauled out of the house loose and limp kept playing in a loop. Over and fucking over.

That could’ve been Anaya.

My gut clenched and chest ached.