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“You think you can do better?”
I glanced at Danvers, and I could see the neat hole in his forehead, and the blood pooling under him. I wished I could summon up pity, but I was fighting for my life, and for the kids who’d been stolen.
Someone needed to stop this horror.
“Better than someone like him,” I huffed. “Someone who fucked up and let people get close enough for me to lose out on money?” I paused for a moment. “Yeah.”
Mitchell’s hand flexed and I waited for the bullet, refusing to close my eyes or give him the satisfaction of seeing fear, and then he chuckled, and holstered the gun. “It’s all about the money for you fucking assholes,” he said.
He kicked the padlock on the grating, and it fell apart, the grating sliding to one side, then he gestured at me, then Danvers. “Dispose of that,” he ordered.
I glanced past the open grate to the shaft below.Yep. Mining.
I rolled and shoved at Danvers—no lightweight—and all the time Rouxier and Mitchell had moved to the door with Rouxier shouting about what had gone wrong.
“If this comes back on my campaigning when all I wanted was the money… ” I heard Rouxier begin.
My back stiffened. Mitchell didn’t seem like the kind of man who took well to threats, and I was right. Rouxier hadn’t read the room here as Mitchell grabbed Rouxier and dragged him out of the barn, which left me and a dead man all alone. I got Danvers to the edge of the shaft, and stared down at his face, at the hole in his forehead, and wished I could summon up pity for the man who’d profited from trafficking guns, drugs, and kids. I had no idea how deep the shaft was, nor if there were other bodies down there, but I didn’t hear his body hit anything. I sat back on my knees allowing the ache from movement to show in a grunt of pain, then I rubbed at my face, carefully sliding my hand to the earring, and engaging the tracker, dropping it to the ground before scrambling to stand and heading outside.
There were more people out there, three SUVs, and around twelve men, some of whom I recognized from what had happened with Kayden and the kids, a couple of them nodded at me in recognition of what we’d all been through.
Sanctuary would surely have enough evidence now to bring down Rouxier, to track who Mitchell was and how he was connected, and most of all what was happening to the kids.
I had to imagine that Sanctuary was out there doing their thing and rescuing kids.
That was all this was about.
For now, though, I had to maintain cover.
Until I spotted a chance to escape.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Josh
It had beenfour days since the children arrived, and the wait for news about Ethan was endless. We’d settled the children, all of them still scared, but between me and some of the other operatives we’d set up a cobbled together curriculum.
Today was Ryder’s ‘introduction to science’ day with the kids, which seemed to involve a lot of banging, crashes, and weird smells coming from the barn on the edge of the property. The fact Ben was in there with Ryder and the kids Sanctuary had rescued meant I hovered, given I’d seen Ryder carrying something that looked a lot like C4—or at least what I imagined C4 looked like. For all I knew it was modeling clay, but then modeling clay wouldn’t create small explosions, right?
At least it took my mind off Ethan being out there somewhere, handling the fact that his side of the operation Rouxier had put him on to had gone wrong. What were they doing to Ethan now? Would Rouxier and whoever worked for him, Danvers maybe, be interrogating Ethan and wanting to know what had gone wrong? What if they connected Sanctuary to the entire thing? What if they joined the dots and concluded that Ethan was front row and center to them losing all these children?
I buried my face in my hands. Those kids… sitting in a quiet circle as Ryder explained in fluent Spanish the mechanics of chemical reaction, staring at him was as if he were explaining the wonders of the universe to them. What happened to them now?
“Thought I’d find you here,” Kayden startled me, but then he had the whole ninja thing going on, and he startled everyone.
“Waiting for… ” Ben, the kids, Ryder… Ethan…
“Yeah,” Kayden said and then sat cross-legged next to me. “I get that.”
We sat in a weird silence where I had questions and yet I knew he wasn’t the most talkative of people, and it made me uncomfortable, and there was a void I needed to fill.
“What’s happening?” I settled on the only question I had.
He shot me a confused glance, as if he’d forgotten I was in the dark about what had happened when the kids had arrived, how had he gotten them, what did he mean about not shooting Ethan, and where was Ethan?
“With the children? That’s above my pay grade,” he offered, and leaned back on his hands, his legs now out in front of him, tilting his face to the sky. “At least, Jake is figuring out what happens to them next. My brother is all about getting them back to their families, but putting in measures to protect those families from vulnerabilities, putting in funding… ” He scrubbed his eyes. “Like I said, above my pay grade.”
“What about Ethan?”
