(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(33)

As we climb, my insides tighten.

I see the house that was four houses down, the one she hid behind. My mouth dries and my heart rate increases as we pass the third house. Then the second one. As we round the corner, I point. “This is it.” I point to the place with the garage next to it. It’s exactly as she recalled.

The chopper lowers with the three military personnel dropping out, guns and eyes at the ready. They start to storm the house, kicking the door in and clearing before we come out. But I don’t wait. I grab a gun from the racks and jump down too, running past the house and into the garage. Rory follows me. His footsteps don’t make me worried; he’s my partner. He has my back. Even if he is still sort of the creepy man of my dreams and nightmares.

And this is why I choose Dash.

He can be the man of my nightmares, but in the end it doesn’t stay. Not like with Rory. I’ve always incorporated Rory. Just never as the bad guy.

I grab the door handle of the barn, my whole journey inside of her mind flashing before my eyes. The word barn is even hers. In my mind I use the word garage.

The door’s locked, so I nudge it with my shoulder.

“Wait!” One of the soldiers comes barreling out of the house, kicking the front door off its hinges and brandishing his gun as he clears past the snowmobiles and ATVs. He creeps about, listening and making hand signals I haven’t seen in a while. I walk straight for the hatch, pressing the button on the wall that matches the one below. As it lifts the soldier gives me a look. “Oh, wow.”

I nod. “It’s bad down there, so let’s not be hasty. Clear every closet. I don’t know the entirety of the floor plan, but it’s mostly cells.”

Rory gives me a dubious stare. “Cells?”

I lift a hand, shaking my head. “You are gonna barf when you read that report.” He has a serious issue with women who are tortured and raped.

“Great.” He nods, following the soldier down the stairs into the dark. I go last, my skin crawling and my stomach aching.

As I get halfway down the stairs the soldier cries, “One dead in a cell so far.” I know whom he means, and I am sorry for the girl whose life I took on. She is perhaps the bravest person I have ever seen, even if she was long dead after I saw her.

The whole place reeks of death and human waste. I had never noticed the smell, inside of Ashley’s mind. The smell was nothing compared to the other horrors, I suppose.

But to us it’s almost unbearable. We cover our faces as we clear the areas, kicking in cells.

Rory opens a door, but I stop him. “That’s just the bedroom and bathroom where he played out his fantasies with them. It’s not a cell. The injured women are in the cells here—we need to help them.”

He gives me another awkward look, but closes the door. I know he just doesn’t want to go farther in. He doesn’t want to see the girls. But he doesn’t realize I’m trying to help him; seeing the room where they were assaulted isn’t going to be better for him. Sexual assault is his kryptonite. For all his joking, he’s not a fan of the scenes where it’s going on.

A soldier comes in behind me, gun up. I nod at the room. “You go clear up there, and we’ll check it after.”

“Clear. We got another deceased,” one soldier cries out.

The other soldier responds, sounding a little upset, “Yeah, and another here!”

Rory gives me a look, one that suggests he might get sick. “Looks like he was ready for us.”

“Open the doors!” I hurry to the rooms where the voices had become almost like friends. A soldier comes, smashing the door open. The redhead lies on the floor, staring up at us. Her eyes have glazed over, and I know she hasn’t been dead long. Her thick, ropey hair is strewn about the floor around her, like a newly deceased Rapunzel.

Each room is the same. When I reach the room with the girl whose life I took, Jane, I drop to my knees. Her name isn’t Jane in the real world. I pretended I was her in Ashley’s mind, making Ashley see this brave young woman as me so she would trust me even more. The girl is cold as ice and her skin is gray, and I can tell she’s been dead for days. The rigor is gone.

I cup her hand in mine, and for a moment I feel like we might have been sisters, even if it was just for a second.

“They’re all dead, and it’s clear,” Rory says blankly.

“He left them, just like he knew we would find them,” I mutter. “He didn’t even dispose of them—bury them.”

Rory places a hand on my shoulder. “I gotta go back up. I can’t do this. You were right.”

I would have smiled had it been any normal case, maybe even made fun of him for his weak stomach. But this time I understand. It’s the fucking sickest thing we have yet to encounter. The other perps we have come across murdered after they tortured or raped, but these girls have been years in the process of slow and painful destruction. To find each one dead is a blow I wasn’t prepared for. We never released any information about finding the girl on the shores of the river. He shouldn’t have known she survived.