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“Yes,” Shane snarls. “How else are we going to get her out of there quietly? She went there willingly, remember? I doubt she’s going to be thrilled to see us. It’s not like we’re putting her in a chokehold. A quick scratch and she’ll fall asleep in your arms,” he says with a roll of his eyes.
“If we hear shots fired, we’re coming in there,” Mikey grumbles.
“Fair enough,” Shane nods his agreement.
“Let’s fucking do this then,” I say as I open the door of the car. Despite everything, I am eager to get in there. I want to see her face. I want to bring our girl home, whether she wants to come with us or not.
Shane climbs out behind me and hands me a gun with a silencer on the end, and I tuck it into the back of my jeans. We don’t plan on using them, but it’s better to be prepared, because we have no idea what we’ll be facing once we get inside.
As we pull up the hoods of our black sweatshirts, we take a quick glance around us before jogging across the road to the small side gate that seems to double as the service entrance. It’s always manned by two armed guards. Shane and I approach from the East, hoping to appear like two guys out for an evening jog. The guards are talking quietly and smoking cigarettes, but they straighten up as we approach.
We jog right on up, as though we’re going to breeze past, and catch them both by surprise. I grab the bigger one, placing my hands around his neck and snapping it with ease. Shane does the same to his counterpart and the two men fall to the floor within a few seconds of each other. I hoist one of them up and rest his right thumb against the electronic keypad, and the metal gate clicks open. It’s lazy security to use the thumb of your dominant hand on a fingerprint keypad system. It’s the one that people always assume you’ll use, and most people do.
“Let’s get these two off the street,” Shane says, and we drag their lifeless bodies through the entrance, dumping them just inside the walls as we close the gate behind us. I reach into my pocket and take out my scalpel before I lean down and cut off the thumb of the guy who just kindly opened the gate for us. It slices easily through the bone and cartilage. I wipe the blood on my sweatshirt and pop his thumb into my pocket before handing the scalpel to Shane. “You may as well take his, too, in case we get split up?” I nod to the other dead man a few feet away.
“He was right-handed, wasn’t he?” Shane asks as he holds the blade against the dead man’s hand.
I nod and watch as my brother slices through his thumb and pockets it before we make our way toward the house. Another guard is patrolling just a few meters in front of us. Shane gives a low whistle, making him look in his direction and temporarily distracting him while I sneak up behind him and snap his neck, gently lowering him to the ground before pulling him into the nearby bushes. Snapping necks is my favorite way to kill someone. It’s quick and clean and a skill that I learned at a very young age, and have continued to perfect.
Once we’re inside the house, we make our way upstairs and walk along the dim hallway, past the bedrooms, sure that Jessie must be in one of them. But there are at least six doors on this floor.
“You start at this end, and I’ll start at the other,” Shane whispers, and I nod my agreement. He walks to the other end of the hallway while I try the first door. The handle turns quietly, and I peer inside the dark room. It’s a bedroom, but it doesn’t appear to be occupied. I look up as Shane does the same at the opposite end of the corridor before looking at me and shaking his head.
Two down. Four to go.
I move along to the next room and grab hold of the handle, and I’m just about to turn it when it moves in my hand.
Shit!
I step back into the shadows as the door swings open, ready to go for my gun if I need to. Then she walks out of the bedroom and I swear my heart stops beating in my chest. She looks like Jessie, but not like her. Like maybe she’s sleepwalking or something. Her beautiful red hair is tied up in a messy ponytail and she wears a nightgown which has a food stain on the front.
I step toward her and her eyes dart to the shadows where I’m standing. “Jessie,” I whisper, unable to stop myself from reaching out to her. I’m vaguely aware of Shane making his way toward us. At first, she seems to stare right through me. But then I see the flicker of recognition in her eyes and her face suddenly becomes more animated.
“Con-” she starts to say my name before she falls backwards into Shane’s arms and I realize he’s injected the sedative into her neck.
“Let’s get her out of here before someone notices us,” Shane orders.
I stand frozen to the spot as I stare at her, unconscious in his arms. There was something definitely not right about her.
“Conor,” Shane says through clenched teeth, snapping me from my momentary trance.
“We need to make sure there’s no one in that room waiting for her to come back in,” I warn him.
He closes his eyes, as though the thought of someone being in there, in her bed with her soft warm body pressed up against them, pains him. I know that it fucking hurts me. I realize that if I look inside that room and see anyone in there, I’ll shoot him in the head. I don’t give a fuck if we’re supposed to be keeping this low key.
“Go on,” he eventually replies with a flick of his head toward the door.
I walk closer to her room with my heart hammering in my chest while blood pounds against my eardrums. I open the door wider. Reaching inside, I flick on the light. The bed is empty. Rumpled covers confirm she was sleeping there, but she was alone. I sigh deeply and lean my forehead against the door frame. “It’s clear. Let’s go,” I whisper as I turn around. “You want me to take her?” I offer.
“No, she hardly weighs anything,” Shane replies as he hoists her up into his arms. I lift her arm and drape it around his neck, letting my hand linger on the skin of her wrist just a little longer than necessary. She’s cold to the touch, despite this house being warm. My gut tells me there is something definitely not right here. That woman I just saw was definitely Jessie, but not the Jessie I’ve come to know.
Despite the security in Alexei’s fortress, Shane and I manage to make it out through one of the tunnels leading from the cellar without any further interference. We run over to the SUV as Mikey climbs out and opens the door to the back seat.
“She okay?” he asks as we approach.
“She’s fine,” Shane replies.
I jump in first and Shane places Jessie on the seat beside me. I pull her against me as he climbs in and Mikey runs back around to the front of the car. I lay Jessie’s head on my lap as Shane pulls her feet onto his knees.
