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I lost my damn flashlight in the pile of limbs, so I could only use the light from the cracks in the boarded-up windows.
My heart stopped.
Inside an even smaller cage than I had seen before was a woman. She rattled the cage. Her body contorted. Her amber eyes looked like a zombie, glazed over and unseeing. Was she drugged?
Calling to Quinn I walked to the prisoner, the cage still rattling with her robotic smashing.
“Hi there,” I said tentatively, showing my hands and walking slowly.
Quinn cursed as his eyes landed on the feeble girl.
“Was she abandoned? Or did someone bring her here?” I said to Quinn.
He shook his head and pulled his shirt off of him. I was going to hell for admiring the pounds of hard muscle on my partner right now. Shaking my head, I turned back to the person who had endured trauma.
“She’s heavily drugged,” I whispered, my gaze fixed on her unblinking eyes.
“We need to get her out of here,” Quinn said, breaking the cage bars with just his strength.
He manipulated the bar so the lock simply fell off. The door creaked open, but the girl didn’t move. She just kept smashing her hands into the same spot, but now was hitting the air. As gently as he could, Quinn grabbed the female, using his shirt to wrap around her naked and heavily bruised body.
The human part of me cried, and the cop part of me raged. Another part…wanted whoever tortured this poor woman to pay. Her fingernails were broken and bloody. She may be heavily drugged because she looked like a fighter. Her spirit, even in this world, was never broken. She humbled me to my bones.
Quinn wrapped her body more tightly in his shirt, cradling her head away from the gore on the bottom of the floor.
“You take her to the squad car,” I told him, turning back to the Jenga puzzle staircase. “I need to make sure she’s alone.”
I could hear Quinn’s protests. His assurances of calling this in, but I had to know. I had to look. My mind was racing with the hope and absolute terror that I might find Cassie here. As I approached the top of the staircase, the metal gave way, a huge slash cutting between my feet.
I tried to grab onto the wall, but it was no use. The unsteady metal cracked even more, and a groan like a ship rang out as it swung me sideways, smashing me against the wall. My body fell with the broken metal steps into darkness and rot.
Another soul to be kept prisoner of this butcher’s shop.
* * *
I woke up, a painful sound of beeping in my ears. All I could make out was white: white walls, a white gown, white chairs, a white bed, and a white cover.
Snow freaking white.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was in a hospital. That much was obvious. The annoying beep was some contraption stuck to my finger. A handsome nurse walked in. He had dark hair and green eyes, a strange smile playing on his lips as he approached me.
“Look at you,” he said, a cheery tone in his voice, but it was off somehow. “We must call you sleeping beauty.”
I cringed. I was no princess. And one had been taunting me for long enough.
“Where’s my partner?” My voice sounded like gravel had been shoved down my throat.
He looked confused, grabbing my chart and reading over it.
“Sorry, you’re all alone…” Scrolling down with his finger, he stopped with some unreadable expression in his eyes. “Ella, is it?”
I gave him a strange look. Did I know him? My brain was fried, and I felt like I swallowed a pound of hay.
“Interesting,” he murmured, before grabbing something from my bag and walking out.
What the hell?
Since when did nurses steal from their patients?
