Chapter 44 Convict My crew's convoy of night-black vehicles crept through Deadwater's industrial quarter. Hidden in the back of the lead truck with Shade, Arran, Manny, and Tyler, I touched the gun at my hip, every one of us armed to the teeth with the weapons glinting in the dim red light. Kane drove another vehicle, the stubborn fucker refusing to wear a skeleton mask over his face like he didn't care if he was identified. He'd have no choice over the masks we'd wear once inside. Gas masks dangled from straps around our necks, ready to deploy. I sat with my elbows on my knees, my head pounding a fast beat. I couldn't stop thinking about her. Mila in that cage. Mila saying, Love is earned, not demanded. It had gutted me worse than any blade to the ribs. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ ƒindNoᴠᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. I'd thought I could handle tonight. Thought I could lock my shit down and give the crew my all. But her voice kept looping, a taunt and a truth in equal measure. And underneath that, something worse. Memories clawing for the surface. Her face. Perfect, beautiful Mila in the time I couldn't remember. Why did I know her? If it was real and not some trick of my amnesia, why didn't she remember me? Or was that the biggest lie between us? "Stay on the planet," Shade muttered. I blinked. He'd caught me zoning out. "I'm fine." "Do that when an asshole with a machine gun is running at ye then tell me everything's grand." Arran leaned forwards and commanded everyone's attention. "Listen up. Salter's rabbit warren has multiple choke points. We've got no reliable blueprints, but from intel, we know it's underground. There are two main air shafts leading to the back of the complex, plus one central staircase that feeds the sublevels." Shade tapped a chunky black briefcase. "We'll drop gas through the shafts. The chemical mix I've rigged is a fast-acting, temporary KO agent. That'll give us five to seven minutes of free movement before it starts wearing off." Arran grinned dangerously. "Salter will be running scared. Bastard has a habit of using his people as human shields. But this time, we bottleneck the fucker." Shade looked at me. "Convict, you're with Manny and me. No solo hero shit. Arran's leading the main breach with the others." I flexed my fists. "Understood." Liar. I didn't agree. I wanted blood. I wanted answers. I wanted to rip something apart just to quiet the screaming in my skull. But orders were orders. Arran gave the final rundown: three teams, one to secure the main floor, the others to lock down the tunnels. "If we funnel him, we can push Salter towards the old maintenance tunnels on the west side. No cameras. No exits. That's where we take him." The vehicle jerked to a halt. "We're on." We jumped out, weapons ready. I jammed the mask over my face and followed them out into the dark. The complex sprawled low and wide, an old pet food factory converted into a fortress. Steel walls gleamed with damp under the streetlights. Tyler's crew peeled off first, heading for the air shafts. A rope drop had been pre-set earlier by a scout team. I followed Shade and Manny around the side. We reached a narrow service entrance with a keypad. Arran's voice buzzed in our earpieces. "On my mark. Hold until gas is deployed." I crouched, my breath misting the mask. And in the space of waiting, everything unspooled. Mila's eyes, wide and wet with unshed tears. Her mouth gasping when I upped the speed of the vibrator. I need you to be honest. Not lie to me. The name Convict, spat at me by a faceless crowd, teenage fists flying in the blood-slicked basement of that Leith fight club. The spiderweb scar. The scared face of a girl. The feeling that everything I knew was a lie I'd built to survive. "Deploying gas," Shade reported. I forced my mind to the present. Listened as his crew dropped two canisters down into the vents. A hiss. Faint green mist coiling up. Seven minutes, Shade had said. He readied the override for the service door. "Go." The door clicked open, and we slipped inside. The interior was decay and rot. Forklifts abandoned mid-run. Pallets stacked floor to ceiling. Faint alarms buzzed, but nothing else stirred. The gas had worked. Bodies lay slumped already, guards in masks, collapsed where they stood. We moved fast, hugging walls, eyes on every side passage. Arran's voice crackled. "Main floor secured. Tunnel teams on the move. Salter unaccounted for." Manny returned, "Copy. Stay sharp." My headache spiked. I stumbled and caught myself on a rail. Shade stopped. "All good?" "Fine," I lied. The sense of déjà vu was unbearable. The smell of damp and the dim lighting. The way the tunnels forked. The sense of something deadly lurking around a corner. I'd been here before. Not this exact place. But a place like this. A warehouse, as a recruit. Or something worse. My hand went back to the scar on my side, feeling it pulse. I pictured Mila, and fear ghosted over me. Something shifted ahead. Arran's announcement crackled over the line. "Salter's on the run. We flushed him out of the sublevel tunnels." Manny cursed. "Fucker's smarter than he looks." Shade gestured sharply for me to cut left. We took a side passage, angling to intercept. The gas was thinning. Ahead, faint shouting echoed, panicked voices, gunshots. "Go. Now!" Shade barked. We sprinted. The tunnels narrowed, and we passed cages stacked against the walls. Old, rusted things. Memories blurred with reality, me hating a place like this. But not with my fists raw, but something else. A need to act and hide my emotions. I barely heard Shade's shout from far ahead. I'd fallen behind. Between me and them, a door burst open. Salter fell out, gaunt, wild-eyed, and gasping. He clutched a gun with his silver rings glinting. He froze when he saw me. I didn't. With a yell, I surged forward, gun up. I didn't pause but fired a round to his thigh. The bastard crumpled and screamed. I was on him in seconds, yanking the weapon from his limp fingers, driving a knee into his back. Blood smeared the floor. His voice came high and shaking. "You don't...fucking...know who I am." I grabbed a handful of his greasy hair and slammed his head to the concrete. "You wish that were true." To my crew, I reported, "Got him." Arran's team piled in behind me. He knelt at my side. "Nice work. Are you okay?" "Fucking fine." Why the worry about me when I'd caught the guy? I hauled Salter upright, shoving him into a limping walk while he screamed. As we moved, my skull nearly split in two. The scar burned. Memories tried to flood in, too fast, too much. Blood on the blade. My blood. A brand, not a scar. Convict. And Mila. Always Mila. Somewhere, somehow, before all of this, I'd known her. The truth danced just out of reach. We got to the van. Manny threw the back doors open, and we dumped Salter inside. To my right, Tyler threw his mask off like it burned him. Arran clapped my shoulder. "You did good tonight." But I barely heard him. Because every beat of my pulse screamed one thing. Mila wasn't a stranger. I'd been right about knowing her. This whole time, we'd been known to each other all along. At an off-site nondescript trading estate, we drove into the cover of the building and offloaded Salter to an interrogation room. Safer not to take him to the warehouse when we were unsure if we'd be pursued. The extraction operation had gone nicely to plan, thanks to the intel given up by the grunt Mila had gotten the name for. The underground room was concrete with no windows. A bright light fell over a steel chair above a drain, and the single camera feed went to the crew who watched from outside. Salter had been stripped to his boxers and duct taped to the seat, his wrists behind the backrest, and ankles locked to the floor bolts. Blood oozed from the gunshot wound to his thigh. He woke to a jolt from an electrode pressed to his bare side. A muscle stimulator had been wired to a portable battery. Shade's handiwork. Salter hissed in pain, jerking in the seat. "What the fuck is this?" Shade stepped back and gestured for me to proceed. I brushed my fingers over the skeleton mask hiding my face. "Jan Salter. Answer our questions and you might live to see sunrise. Lie, and you'll die in this room and no one will ever know how your miserable life ended." "Fuck you. What do you want?" I crouched to eye level with him. "Where is Rhys Jacobs?" Salter laughed a wheezing hack. "That piece of shit? You're out of luck. He's long dead." My stomach gutted. "How?" He flexed on the seat, grimacing. "No idea. I was told it but I never saw the body." "Then how are you sure?" "Because I would've found the miserable son of a bitch by now. He came out of your goddamned game, and my guess is he got jumped and eradicated that night. Now you know as much as I do, let me the fuck out of here." I chuffed a laugh. "You're in no position to make demands." "I'll see both of you hanging from the rafters of the base you raided and let your blood decorate my floor." How descriptive. Shade tutted. "How did you know he was going into our game?" Salter clamped his jaw. Shade handed me a pair of black metal pliers. "Your choice." I took them without flinching. Salter's eyes widened. I gripped the pliers around his smallest finger and squeezed, enough to crush the nail, break the bone, and pulp the flesh beneath. He screamed, the sound bouncing off the walls. "One of my girls gets the names from her boyfriend." "Who is?" He gave up the name of one of the guys who worked the bar in Divide. He'd be fired by the time we got back. I moved on. "Why did you need Jacobs?" "He was trying to quit his part in our chain." Salter's breath came in ragged gasps. "He couldn't walk away. My goddamn livelihood, and he was fucking around with it." "He was selling the women you supply in his auctions? That's why you took over?" Salter's mouth stayed closed. Wrong choice. I picked up his next finger. Crushed it. Then a third. Silver rings tinkled to the floor and rolled, one by one. His anguish filled the room. "Fuck, okay! You're wrong. He brought the women in, not me. He had a reputation with clients and could earn top dollar. I couldn't replicate it and I couldn't let him just walk away." Mila had said the auctions were run by Jacobs when he was fresh out of school. "If he sourced the flesh and ran the auctions, what was your role?" "Vendor for rejected stock." Disgust coated my tongue. We'd suspected Jacobs could've moved on from virginity auctions of willing women to being a people trafficker, but Salter was claiming he was more. The kingpin in the trade that disintegrated with his departure. None of this gelled to the image of the man I'd met in the interview. The grandma-fiddling contestant who'd wanted skeleton crew protection. Who'd been knocked out only minutes into the game. "Why did he quit?" Salter breathed through his nose. Stubborn fuck. I nodded to Shade, who clipped a jumper cable to Salter's broken hand. A zap of current and Salter convulsed, howling. Sweat poured down his face. "No idea!" His spit flew. "Something scared him off. He stopped showing up. Pulled his money. Wouldn't answer calls." "You expect us to believe that's all you know?" "I swear it. Something changed. Someone bigger than me spooked him. I just wanted him to man the fuck up and keep the business going for all our sakes." And for that, he'd forced Mila into the game. I leaned in, my voice low. "You're going to give us more than that, Salter. You're going to tell us everything you know about who he worked with, when and where it took place. And if you don't..." Shade reached for a scalpel with a steady hand. "Then we'll open you up and find the truth ourselves."