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“And kill bad guys in the process.”
“Saving first, killing later,” I press on. “Don’t fuck this up, Trent. You like to work alone, but we actually like our team and try to keep them alive.”
“Fuck off and grab your gun, asshole.” And with that, Trent is out of the car, with us right behind him.
We are all in tactical gear, armed from head to toe with extended ammo and bulletproof vests. All three of us have trained extensively and trust each other with our lives. The chances of us being successful in an extraction like this are usually high. When we deal with civilians, that is. Clearly, these guys have many resources and are most likely trained as well as we are, which means this mission could go wrong very quickly.
Any other time, we would wait for backup, but this is not just another case. This is Natalie we are talking about, and I’m not leaving her in there for another second longer.
I check my gun, rifle, knife, and backup gun one more time as we make our way to the back of the large main building. It’s dark outside, cold winter air dances around, but the clear sky lends us enough light to see with ease in the dead of night.
When we get to the back entrance, we’re surprised to find it unlocked. Trent goes in first, rifle drawn. Dallas and I follow him closely, our rifles aimed as well. The inside hallway is lit with the flickering light from the ceiling. This place is supposed to be abandoned, but someone is clearly here, or at the very least, was here recently.
The space stinks of mold and dust, and the quiet surrounding us is eerie. There are no sounds coming from anywhere. Fear creeps up my spine. What if… no, I can’t go there, not now. I need to keep my head clear and concentrate on the mission. Natalie can’t be dead. We’ll find her. We have to. There’s too much I haven’t said. Things I haven’t told her.
Shaking the ugly thought away, we move on through the hallway, clearing every room we pass.
“Clear,” Trent murmurs when we finish with a room.
It isn’t until we come to the fifth room when Dallas finds something interesting. “Look at this,” he says in a hushed voice, pointing at something on the table. “It’s a newspaper… in Russian.”
“We knew it had to be someone involved with a lot of resources.”
“And the Russian government would fit that bill perfectly,” Dallas agrees.
“Let’s keep moving,” Trent orders, leading the way further down the hall.
There’s still no sign of anyone being here, but that doesn’t mean we’re letting our guard down. We clear two more rooms before we get to one that looks like a cell. A broken chair with ripped duct tape is lying in the center of it.
“They probably kept her here,” Trent suggests. “And they took her with them instead of killing her, which means she is alive.” His words feel like a small Band-Aid on the huge hole left in my chest.
He is right; the chances are she’s alive, but again, what is she going through? What state is she in and how long will it take for us to find her?
“Let’s search the rest of the place,” Dallas suggests.
Leaving the newspaper behind, we moved further into the building. The next room is completely empty. Not much to see here. I’m about to tell the guys this is useless when we come to another cell.
What we find inside has the blood freezing in my veins. It’s Beverly, dead on the ground with a bullet wound between her eyes. Blood is pooled around her lifeless body, painting a scene of what happened here.
“The blood is smeared like there was a fight, and it couldn’t have been her,” Trent says as he inspects the crime scene.
“Look at this,” Dallas points at something on the ground. I step closer just to realize it’s a bloody handprint. “We can have forensics run the prints, but I’m guessing that’s Natalie’s. She must’ve been here. Maybe she was holding her mom, saying goodbye, and then someone grabbed her.”
“I don’t really care what happened here,” I spit, anger boiling inside of me like a volcano, ready to erupt. “All I care about is finding Natalie and getting her back.”
“We will,” Dallas says firmly. “We’ll get her back, and we’ll make them pay for hurting her.”
By the time we clear the rest of the rooms, our backup finally arrives. Not that we need them anymore. We let them finish checking out the rest of the power plant before we make the dreaded call to Mason.
He answers on the first ring. “Tell me you found her.”
I grip the phone a little tighter. “I wish I could say we did.”
“Fuck.”
“We found a cell. It looks like they were holding her there. We also found some Russian magazines in another room.”
