Blood and Bone | 1

2 | 7

My eyes swept through the shadows of the warehouse and beyond, to where I could see nothing. Something about that place was eerie and made me nervous. Maybe it was too similar to another place I'd had to endure in my past.

      Despite being alone in the place, I moved quietly in the shadows. I wasn't taking any chances.

      It was easy to find Hundsen's desk, as it was in the center of the warehouse. "Bottom cabinet on the left," I mumbled my team when we'd all assembled in front of the desk.

     Jaxon yanked on the handle, but it didn't open. It was locked, just the same as when I'd tried it last night. The simple clanking noises of the drawer being shaken seemed to be magnified in the sprawling warehouse.

When Riley tried it, it had the same lack of success as Jaxon. "Damn it. I'm good at picking locks. Does anyone have a bobby pin?"

"Yeah, let me just get out the one I keep in my hair," Jake sneered, sarcasm dripping from his words even more nastily than usual. His face, like usual, was stoic and impassive, but I thought I caught a glimpse of nervous impatience in his expression.

"It's...not...opening," Finn murmured between tugs on the handle as he heated it up with his bare hands.

Shoving him aside, Jake knelt in front of the file cabinet. In his hand, he effortlessly formed a sharp icicle thin enough to fit in the lock. Something told me he held off to do this to watch Finn fail.

Stabbing it onto the lock, we all held our breaths. With a slight click, the drawer slid open and stopped. Leaning forward to see over Finn's shoulder, I peered into the drawer. But it was empty.

Meaning someone had either known we were coming, or it was by some freakish coincidence. But the only ones who knew we were breaking in tonight were the eight people on my team. Though I doubted someone ratted us out to the Crepuscule Club, it was still a possibility. If it was possible, my trust in my teammates got even smaller.

      It wasn't that I didn't like them. I was even finding myself smiling at Arlo's jokes and Riley's sassy remarks. Maybe the girl I could have been would have even made friends with them.

      But that didn't mean that they couldn't let me down. That's how some people were. They made you like them, trust them, and care for them. And then they turned around and were the first one to stab you in the heart with your own knife.

     The trouble was, they were usually sneaky. They'd made you trust them in no time, almost without you knowing so that you could never see them coming. That's what made them dangerous. So that was why I had to be even more dangerous.

      I wouldn't and couldn't put my life in their hands. I had no idea which one of them was going to let me fall. Three years of my life in hell on earth had taught me that.

      "It's empty..." Gigi stated, her blue eyes peering into the drawer in shock, bringing me out of my thoughts.

      "Is it really?" Jake asked even more sarcastically than before and then turned to lock my eyes with his own chilling green ones as he stood to his feet. "You lied."

       "It's flattering how highly you think of me, Evans."

      Jake would have probably given me a dry retort, but he was cut off by a loud booming noise that hadn't come from anything any of my teammates had moved. I'd only heard that thunderous sound once last night, and it was when one of the doors was closing.