Gray checked the rearview. Ryan was still there.
On the outskirts of town, they drove straight into an area that was mostly dark. Warehouses met garage bays, and most lots had barbed wire fences or big signs about high security. And at the end of the street, there were three self-storage companies, one after another, and Gray spotted Niko at the last one, waving them in. He was wearing his balaclava, so Gray followed suit and put his on.
It didn’t feel great. In fact, for the first time that night, Gray felt really fucking nervous. His stomach tightened as he drove into the large area. It was too open. There was too much space between the storage units. One row consisted of actual hangars, and he spotted a sign for a local pilot’s club. They had fucking planes here.
Niko ran ahead and pointed toward a unit farther up, and Gray nodded. He saw the spot. It was another big one, a garage bay type of unit. Their other truck was parked to the side of it, and it looked like Dante was…cleaning? He was wiping down the doors with something.
Gray rolled down his window.
Just as he pulled in next to the truck, he noticed another person. He blinked before it dawned on him. The young man’s threadbare clothes, his skinny frame, messy hair, and the expression of a deer getting caught in headlights.
Had Gray looked like that too?
He heard Niko call the guy Gavin.
“Okay, we’re ready,” Dante declared. “We gotta be quick as fuck about this. Everyone, help out opening the cages. And put on gloves!”
Cages.
Gray blanched, and a flashback threatened to pull him under. Flashing lights, wet wooden crates covered with a film of mildew and vomit, echoing cries, crippling despair—snap the fuck out of it. He swallowed hard and steeled himself. He jumped out of the truck and ran after Niko. In the large garage bay, rows upon rows of wooden cages were stacked on top of one another, and each row had a steel bar that kept the doors locked. Gray registered the soundproofing material along the outer walls as well as the heavy-duty cutter Niko picked up off the floor. Dante had one too.
It was overwhelming. The smell, so fucking familiar, was here too. Bile crawled up Gray’s throat as he put on his gloves, but he managed to push it all aside and help out. Niko and Dante broke the locks at the end of each row, and by the time Gray was pulling the first bar out of the metal brackets, Ryan was at his side to assist.
That was when the sounds reached Gray’s ears. The sounds of traumatized and confused people wondering what was happening.
“Are we going to die?”
“Who are you?”
“Please don’t kill us.”
“My neck hurts.”
“I want my mom.”
Gray worked on autopilot, through the fog of horror, in the darkness, releasing the victims one by one.
“Get in the truck,” he repeated over and over, along with, “You’re safe now. You’re getting out of here. Get in the truck.”
Their faces turned into a loop of images in his head. Broken boys and girls, many younger than him, some the same age.
“I know it’s gonna be crowded, everyone,” Dante said, his voice echoing in the bay. “I promise it’s only for a little while. Gavin here is going to take you straight to the hospital in Barstow.”
A young girl stumbled out of her cage, and Gray lurched forward to steady her. But in his doing so, she cried out in sheer fear and begged him not to hurt her.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.” He rushed out the words as revulsion caught his chest in a vise. He couldn’t handle being thought of as the enemy here. “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. You’re safe.”
She was shaking like a leaf but let Gray help her out of the bay and toward the truck. Christ, she couldn’t be more than fifteen.
“I wanna go home,” she sobbed.
“You’ll be home soon,” Gray promised. “The doctors and the police will help you—all of you—as soon as you get to Barstow.”
This had to be the remaining forty-something survivors from the photos. Gray couldn’t keep up with the head count, but the back of the truck filled up rapidly. No one ran away, something that would’ve seemed perfectly logical to most people. Even to Gray. But he also knew the other side of what it was like to be a captive. Sometimes, you didn’t need physical bonds to be restrained. He still remembered how useless and weak he’d felt. Crossing a simple threshold could be too much. Add malnourishment, sleep deprivation, and torture to that, and you had a deadly imprisonment.
Someone broke down somewhere inside the truck, and it made Gavin, the guy who was gonna drive, run over to them.
“Lucy!” he called. “Come out here. Lance, you too. You can ride with me up front.”