Inked Babies (Inked Brotherhood 6)

Not even his own brother, from the looks of it. Tyler is staring at Asher as if he’s grown two heads overnight.

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“We’ll talk about this later,” he grumbles.

Asher doesn’t seem to hear him. The trapdoor is rusty, but the padlock looks brand new and heavy duty. The metal rod doesn’t do the trick, so Ash fishes out a thing with a small hook at the end and tries that.

“How did you know there was a basement?” I ask Zane as we watch this attempt fail as well. “Not all houses around here have basements.”

Zane sits back and when Dakota sits down next to him, he almost absently pulls her closer to him with an arm around her shoulders. “Nothing else made sense.”

Third time’s the charm, and the lock opens with a loud click. Asher pulls the padlock off and Tyler leans over to help him pull the flaps open.

They thump on the ground, raising a small cloud of dust that swirls in the narrow beams of the flashlights.

Quiet.

Faint sounds, like the thumping of my heart.

A rustle as Dylan and Tessa step closer.

A car honking in a street not far.

But mostly quiet.

“Hello!” Rafe leans over the opening. “Is anybody there?”

We wait.

Nothing.

“I’m going in first,” Rafe says.

“Then I’m going with you.” I look at him until he nods.

“But I go first,” he sets his conditions. “Hold the flashlight for me.”

I take it and shine light into the opening. It’s like a mouth in the Earth, an entrance to the underworld.

“I should be the one to go first,” Zane says, standing up.

“No fucking way,” Asher, Dylan and Erin say at the same time.

“Zane, no.” Dakota scrambles up and laces her arms around his hips. “Let them go first.”

“I can’t. I need to fucking see what’s down there.”

“Let us go first,” I say, “and then we’ll call out, and you can come right after.”

If there’s something bad down there, something shocking, I don’t want him to see. Not when he’s so shattered already.

And I know everyone is thinking the same, because as Rafe lowers his legs into the opening and I point the flashlight into the darkness below, I see our friends form a human net around Zane and Dakota, a web of protection. A wall, not letting him through until Rafe and I give the okay.

He isn’t happy about it. He grumbles and tries to shove Asher aside, but not too hard. I think he’s also scared of what we might find. Afraid of what his mind is capable of doing when faced with something reminding him of his past, stripping his control and throwing him kicking and screaming back into the nightmare.

“There are steps,” I tell Rafe, and he’s already trying them with his biker boot, testing. “Think they’ll hold?”

“They’ll hold,” he says and starts going down, turning in the last moment to look up at me, his golden eyes bright. “Give me the flashlight and stick with me. It’s kind of a long way down.”