The Rules of Survival (Mercer #1)

RoS Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Four

My laundry ended up back in bags, half washed, sopping wet, and thrown haphazardly into the back of the Escalade.

Sal drove his Beamer. Henry was behind the wheel of Gin's Honda. This left me, Justice and Gin in the Escalade. I knew she was only here to ensure me and Justice didn't go for each other's throats. Not that we had anything left to say to each other. As far as I was concerned, it was all pretty clear; after tonight Justice would be someone I used to know, and I'd return to my newly appointed domestic role.

I had no idea where we were going, and I was too frazzled to keep an eye on the rapidly passing scenery. My mind was otherwise occupied, busy coming to terms with what had just gone down.

They had come for me, and they'd nearly succeeded. Justice said he had it all under control, but that wasn't good enough. I was still sitting here clinging to my sanity with slippery fingers, convinced every shadow was going to morph into some gun toting zealot with my name on his lips and the barrel pointed straight between my eyes. After tonight, I'd be lucky if I left the house alone again.

Despite the freezing temperature, the wind filtering in through the broken back window was a welcome distraction. It numbed my cheeks and stung my eyes and let me kid myself into believing my hands were shaking uncontrollably because of the cold, not because of other things.

A bump in the road jostled me and I glanced around to discover we were quite a ways from the city, heading into an industrial area full of two story warehouses. The surrounding darkness immediately set me on edge; the car headlights illuminating the road weren't enough to make me feel good about where we were going or what we were going to do once we got there.

None of the warehouses were lit from within, the only thing more noticeable being the lack of sounds around us. There were no dogs barking, no car horns blearing. For all intents and purposes we could have been the only people left on the planet. It certainly felt that way.

Justice slowed at the end of a narrow road, having hit a dead end. He turned into the lot of one of the warehouses, a single story structure both wider and longer than either one of its neighbors. Sal and Henry pulled in behind him, and the CBK got to work. I stood to one side with Kalen's leather jacket pulled tight around me watching them manhandle their captives out of the car, dragging them under heavy protest through a side door.

At a loss and suddenly petrified, I scrambled after them and closed the metal door behind me to a symphony of metallic squeals and groans. We would have been thrust into pitch black had Sal not produced a heavy duty flashlight. Something touched my elbow, and the ensuing fear made me gasp.

"Hey, easy, it's just me," Gin said, wrapping her fingers around my arm and guiding me. She squinted in the near dark, trying to gauge my expression. "I don't know why he brought you here. He should have taken you home first."

"What is this place?"

"It's owned by the CBK, and we use it for...well, you'll see soon enough."

"What are we doing here?" I whispered as we made our way through a maze of crates and came out on the other side where a bunch of offices were situated. A fine layer of dust coated every surface, except a well traversed path on the floor that indicated this place was used more than the state of it suggested. Gin was about to answer when a light switch was flicked and I had to shield my eyes from the blinding light.

"Much better," Sal said, coming back out of an office. He flicked off the torch and handed it to Gin.

Justice and Henry secured their captives in an office, to a couple of hard backed chairs with duct tape. I followed Gin into the otherwise empty room, trying hard to blend in and become part of the wall. A feeling of foreboding washed over me, causing my palms to sweat. This was the part where it got ugly, I deduced as my eyes met Justice's.