AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We leveled out about twenty steps down, and the air was so much cooler it felt like entering a meat locker. There was no light aside from my little flashlight, but that gave me enough illumination to show me what we were facing down here.
The stairs stopped at a long hallway, and on either side were rooms with the same heavy metal doors we had seen at the top. Each one had a small, dark window in it, and I would have cut off my tit to not need to get face-to-face with those windows to see what was inside. That was way too obvious of a horror movie setup for my taste.
Yet I was here because people were missing, and these rooms were most definitely used to house people inside.
“I don’t like this,” Emilio said.
“There is literally nothing about this to like.”
Suddenly the room was flooded with light to the point I had to blink it away I was so surprised. I turned around to see Harry standing next to a light switch giving me the most incredulous look.
“What is the deal with you guys? You stalk around in the dark, all doom and gloom. Do any of you ever think there might be a light?”
Emilio glanced at me. “I guess if you go into enough rooms without lights, you start to assume no rooms have lights.”
“Well, stop being dummies and keep looking for lights. Yeesh.”
I turned off the flashlight on my phone and set about checking each of the doors to see if they were locked. Even with the lights on, this wasn’t a task I particularly relished. I expected someone to fly at the door and start pounding the glass every time I peered through one of the windows. But they all appeared empty, at least as far as I could tell from their unlit interiors.
I was starting to feel like we’d arrived at the party long after it was finished, and instead of a dance with the guest of honor, all we were going to find was a bunch of deflated balloons and champagne-soaked confetti.
There was nothing here we were looking for.
I got to the last door and was shocked to find that the handle turned easily under the light pressure from my grip. I pulled it open, and on the floor, lying still as death, was the unmistakable blonde form of Ingrid.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Finding Ingrid on the floor in the unlocked cell was almost too much for my poor brain to process.
It seemed beyond hope or reason that she should be there, precisely the place we were looking.
And yet, there she was.
“I found her,” I called out.
As Emilio and Harry rushed to join me, I stumbled into the room, falling to my knees next to her still body. I flinched as my knee reminded me I had taken a crowbar to it not that long ago, but I shoved the pain aside and put my hand on Ingrid. She was, unexpectedly, warm to the touch.
I felt for a pulse and found one.
Was this fucking Christmas? How was it even possible we were getting this lucky?
Gently I rolled her onto her back and double-checked her pulse to confirm I hadn’t imagined it the first time. I felt her chest rise and fall.
“She’s alive,” I announced, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding since I’d entered the room. “She’s alive.”
I squeezed her shoulder and gave her the gentlest of shakes. “Ingrid, can you hear me?”
Harry stood in the doorway, which was pretty much the only place I was comfortable with him being, considering he had a habit of jumping into near-death bodies and didn’t want him thinking Ingrid’s was on the market. Emilio knelt on the opposite side of Ingrid and was checking her vitals as I continued to nudge her.
I could tell she had a pulse, but Emilio actually understood the meaning of what he was feeling.
“Pulse is strong. I think she’s in okay shape,” he said.
Since she wasn’t responding to me, I started inspecting her body for wounds, which would have annoyed the shit out of her if she was conscious. If she wanted to stop me, she should open her eyes.
There had been an unbelievable amount of blood left behind at her apartment, and at least some of it must have been hers. I lifted her shirt, and sure enough she was covered in partially healed knife wounds. I showed Emilio, and he let out a low whistle. She had to have been stabbed over two dozen times based on the marks I could see, and no doubt more were out of sight, hidden beneath other pieces of clothing.
The clothes she was wearing were pristine, though. She’d been given knew ones, and had been healed since she was here.
