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We strode back to the foyer just as Julius and Talon came into view at the top of the stairs at the far end. They were herding several more young women down, and Blaze was standing by the hallway, urging them down it toward the back door.
“I think we got everyone,” Julius said as he and Talon reached the bottom of the stairs, and then frowned at me. “What are you doing down here? You were supposed to—”
He was interrupted by the crash of the front door bursting open. A squad of armed men burst into the room, pelting us with semi-automatic fire in an instant.
We flung ourselves to the floor instinctively, but some of us more purposefully than others. My gut lurched as I watched Talon jerk backward and fall on his ass, blood blooming from a shot to his chest. He clutched at the wound but managed to fire into the sudden crowd of attackers as well.
I squeezed my own trigger, aiming into the horde as well as I could. Dess was shooting frantically, as was Blaze where he’d crouched at the edge of the hall. As my pulse pounded in my ears, one thought pealed through the thrum of frantic adrenaline.
This was my fault. I’d been assigned to watch the front drive—if I hadn’t left my post, I’d have seen the reinforcements approaching and been able to warn everyone. We’d been taken by surprise because of my negligence.Fuck.
Another grunt of pain reached my ears. My gaze darted to where Julius had dropped. He was gripping the side of his abdomen with one hand while he kept shooting with the other.
“Julius!” Dess cried out, and whipped her remaining knives at the incoming attackers alongside our hail of bullets.
The last of the men in the room toppled over. Dess didn’t waste any time dashing to the front door. She fired several more times, and thumps carried from outside. Some of the newcomers had thought to hang back and assess the situation, but they’d met the same fate as their colleagues.
“That’s all of them,” Dess said, her voice tight, as she sprinted back to where Julius and Talon had fallen. “Oh my god. Are you all right? I—what can I do?”
Practical thoughts started racing through my head alongside the blare of guilt. “We have to get them out of here,” I said. “Medical attention. Fast.”
“Keep pressure on the wounds,” Blaze added, rushing in to help Julius to his feet as Dess did the same for Talon. A large red welt marked Julius’s lower abdomen. He held as firmly as his paling fingers could manage. Talon had two wounds—one in his side and another through his thigh—both bleeding just as profusely as Julius’s. I leapt in, wrenching off my shirt so I could wrap it around Talon’s leg as a makeshift bandage.
“What the hell happened?” Blaze said in disbelief as we hustled down the hall toward the nervously waiting girls as fast as we could.
I swallowed thickly. “I left my post. I wasn’t watching—I didn’t see them coming.”
Dess gave me a sharp look. “You left to protect me.”
But maybe I should have gone back after I’d taken the first guy down. Maybe I should have assumed she could handle the other arrivals by herself. Had I gotten so caught up in playing hero for her that I was now going to have the deaths of not one but two of the men I respected most on my conscience?
“There’s no point in assigning blame,” Julius said, his voice rough with pain. “We need to get out of here before more guards come. Small change in strategy. Dess, you and Blaze take the truck we set up for the girls to the place already discussed. Garrison, you drive us in the van. I assume you’ve got a contact or two in the area who’s medically inclined?”
His voice was already faltering by the end of that set of commands. His steps were wavering. I nodded with a jerk, my mind scrambling. Iwasto blame, and so I’d better fucking fix this. Who was the best person to turn to? Who could we trust that the Blood Hunter hadn’t compromised?
As we reached the girls, Dess shepherded them out the back door ahead of her, still supporting Talon. She glanced back at Julius, her mouth set in a pale line. I knew she didn’t want to leave them, but she’d feel a duty to the girls we’d just broken out of this prison too. She wouldn’t let herself fail them.
Thankfully we’d already identified a door in the wall at the back of the property that we’d intended to use to bring the girls out through rather than over the wall anyway. It’d been deadbolted and padlocked from the inside, but Dess made short work of the lock now that we had direct access to it. We hurried through, Julius and Talon’s steps stumbling even more than before, their heads drooping. Guilt burned a hole right through my stomach.
Dess motioned the girls toward the truck we’d parked out of sight around a treed bend. “Head over there. We’ll be with you in a minute.” The girls looked at us like deer in headlights but managed to wander in the right direction. I ran ahead to the van, unlocking it and diving into the driver’s seat as soon as I reached the door. While Blaze and Dess helped the other guys into the back, I started the engine and strained my brain.
Where could I take them? Hospitals were obviously out. This was the job Iwassupposed to be good at—gathering resources, maintaining contacts. There had to be—
Fucking hell, how had I almost forgotten? I’d done some cautionary research when we’d first arrived in the DC area and identified a doctor who took private clients of the questionable sort under the table. He was independent, not under any gang’s thumb, and it was a small-time practice. If the Blood Hunter even knew about him, it was doubtful he’d bothered to harass him.
As soon as the doors slammed shut, I hit the gas and roared away from Gordell’s home. Keeping one hand on the wheel, tuning out the pained breaths carrying from behind me, I whipped out my phone and flicked through it for the contact.
The doctor answered on the third ring with a faded but audibly irritated Irish accent. “Who’s this?”
“Someone who had reasons to get this number,” I said. He used a separate line for our kind of clients. “I’ve got two patients for you, urgent—but we can pay very well.”
“Well, look here, I’ve got appointments this afternoon—”
“Bump them,” I snapped, and reined my temper in. I had to play this right. Had to use the skills of social manipulation that’d made me part of the Chaos Crew to begin with. “With the kind of money we can offer you, you’ll be able to buy every bit of equipment you’ve dreamed of to cure those patients faster the next time they see you.”
“Who says money’s the deciding factor?” he asked, but I could hear the interest in his voice. It hadn’t been quite enough to convince him, though. I took a gamble, assuming he cared about bumping those patients at the last minute because he actually cared aboutthemand not because he felt like being a dick.
“How about this as a bonus: you’ll also be helping the crew who took down a child-torturing cult and who will be ending a human trafficking ring if you patch us up all right.”
