Semua Bab Aegis Group: Bab 91 - Bab 100

Hannah's arms ached. Sweat burned her eyes. The muscles in her back screamed for her to stop. But she wouldn't quit. She couldn't. It was dark enough now she could barely make out the glint of the crude blade."Are you sure that's going to work?" Christine asked from her perch on the bottom bunk."No clue." Hannah lifted the piece of a metal chair leg she'd broken off and examined the edge. She pressed her thumb against it.This time there was a slight bite to the metal.It was working.She spat on the concrete serving as her whetting stone and put her weight into refining the edge."It's working," She whispered."What did you say?" Natalie leaned over the edge."She said it's working," Christine repeated."What are you doing?"Hannah glanced up and across the space between their prisons at another woman. Her English was heavily accented, but Hannah could understand her."I'm making a blade." She lifted it to show the other woman. "You can make them from the chair

"I found them."Mason's eyes snapped open. His sleep-disoriented body was a moment behind his brain, but he knew those words were important."Where?" He scrubbed his face and blinked across the room at Zain.Luke and Travis stood behind his cousin, peering at the screen. Going off their expressions, whatever Zain was excited about didn't translate to the others, but that was normal. Sometimes it seemed that Zain had his own language the rest of them would never speak."Cruz keeps very detailed records." Zain's fingers flew over the keys while his prosthetic manned the mouse. "We're going to be able to turn this over to the government and maybe bring a lot of these girls home. Abraham's staff though, they're here. In the city, as best I can tell. They were sold to a guy who runs a hotel on the other side of town.""What now?" Mason straightened, his brain gaining traction. "We tell Abraham where they are and we're good?""When we shut Cruz down, can we be sure these people w

Mason held his finger up to his lips and rushed to the wall, drawing his gun.Thud. Creak.Thud. Crack.Thud. Thud. Thud.Would the women give Mason up? Was this a Stockholm Syndrome situation? Or would they want to get away? He couldn't tell. And he'd just let one loose.This was going from bad to worse. Where was Travis?Mason tracked the heavy footsteps, eyes trained on the opening, poised on the balls of his feet to move.The clerk lumbered around the turn, his fat head so fused to his body he had to turn his torso to see Mason."Don't move." Mason aimed the gun at the man's head.The clerk stared at him, his gaze dead, lifeless.For a moment, no one breathed. No one moved.The clerk swung his arm surprisingly fast, bending forward in a stiff duck, and knocked Mason's gun to the side. Mason kept a tight grip on the firearm, but the move left him open. The clerk yelled and swung, landing a punch to Mason's kidney. He felt the pain of it but locked down on that

Hannah sat against the back of the closet-sized cell, facing the door. She'd begun to track time by measuring the arc of light stretching toward her under the door. Now the lack of light and the silence told her it was likely nighttime.Her stomach growled and her mouth felt as though she'd crammed it full of cotton balls. The closet was so small she couldn't stretch out her legs or arms. No one had opened the door since her imprisonment that morning.There'd been voices through the day. At first, it was mostly yelling. Cruz's. Other girls. She'd listened, visualizing the room to figure out where each girl was being locked up. The others had cried, screamed even, for a while. But now they were silent. Spent. Broken.And they were not the first.Hannah kept her hands wrapped around her legs. She'd felt the gouges in the wood without realizing what they were at first. It'd taken her a while to figure it out.Nail marks.From where her predecessors had literally tried to claw

Hannah stared into the darkness at the ceiling. The wetness on her face was from her own tears. She didn't remember crying, but the evidence was there. Her whole body was numb. Hope had given way to anger and fear, then despair. For a few brief moments, she'd thought a rescue was going to happen-but she was still here. In the darkness. Alone. She didn't know if she should be scared...or heartbroken.The blast had shaken the entire building, but she hadn't been scared. Something like that could only be one thing-Mason. He hadn't forgotten about her.The gunfire had scared her. Every bullet, each shot, could put Mason's life at risk. There'd already been too high a price paid for this trip. He couldn't die. Not for her.It had to be Mason, didn't it? He had come for her, hadn't he?After a few moments when she didn't hear footfalls and no one responded to her yelling, the fear had set in. Mason couldn't know where she was. No one would. Because she'd tried to save herself. She'd