Her blood pressure hit the roof, and she reached out a hand, catching herself on the table, attempting to steady her legs and quash the panic in her voice.
“Whatever,” she said with as much boredom as she could summon. “The payment doesn’t change.”
“You’ll get your money. Just don’t fuck this up.”
“I’m very good at my job.”
“You keep saying that. Yet you’ve produced nothing.”
“I delivered him here.”
“Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that.” He hardened his tone, which succeeded only in making him sound whiny. “You will stay out of the way until the others get the information you need. Then you will finish this. Understood?”
He expected her to sit here while they butchered and killed Cole.
Yeah, whatever you say, boss.
She swallowed down her rising fury. “Yes.”
He disconnected.
She’d never met him in person, and maybe she never would. But as she tossed the phone and dragged on a pair of black jeans, she vowed that, before she surrendered her last breath, she would witness the glorious annihilation of Vincent Barrington.
Quickly, she pulled on a white t-shirt, combat boots, and checked her appearance in the mirror. The false eyelashes barely hung on. Black eyeliner melted down her cheeks and smeared into her blush. Bright red lipstick slanted over her chin as if streaked by a river of drool.
She looked like a redheaded Harley Quinn, freshly fucked, one-hundred-percent psychotic, and ready to party.
Yeah, her makeup was utterly ruined—thank you, Cole—but it still did its job. It hid her true face.
On her way out, she grabbed a handgun, slid in a full magazine, and clipped a spare mag on her hip. Then she took off down the hall.
Passing the break room, she counted four guys gathered around the table eating and drinking beer. She slipped by unnoticed and turned the corner, pausing at the bathroom. Two men inside. She intersected two more farther down the corridor.
One of them stopped her. “Where are you going?”
“I need a shower.” She gave him a look. “That’s not an invite.”
He held up his hands and backed away, smirking as his eyes drifted down her body.
“The warehouse is all yours, honey.” He turned and paced off in the opposite direction.
Had he just come from there? God, she hoped Cole was still in his cell, and Mike was keeping guard.
As she measured her steps, trying to appear calm, Vincent’s words coiled in her belly.
The team is extracting the information now.
That could mean anything, but her mind conjured knives cutting through flesh, extracting bones, organs, and any part of Cole that would bring out the answer.
By the time she burst into the warehouse, she was sweating and out of breath.
Silence surrounded her, thrashing in her ears. No one was here. She spun toward Cole’s cell.
The door stood open. He was gone.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Where the hell was he?
Where was Mike? Was he in trouble? If Vincent’s men overheard her conversation with him, if they were hurting him…
Horror glued her boots to the floor. Terror pulled through her gut. A helpless void resonated in her chest.
The loading dock.
It was the only place they could be. Unless Cole and Mike were taken somewhere. Somewhere she would never find them.
She raced out of the warehouse, down the eerily quiet corridor, toward the dock.
What if it was a trap? Were they waiting for her to come running? Had they figured out why she was here?
Her eyes darted behind her, expecting one of the doors to open and hands to shoot out.
Paranoia pushed her harder, and dread dug in its claws. She wrestled with it, fighting it down, burying it deep enough to control her breathing. Then she forced herself to holster the weapon in her waistband. She couldn’t burst in with guns blazing. Not without giving herself away.
At the entrance to the loading dock, she pulled in another calming breath and opened the door.
Voices drew her attention to the far side. She flattened her back to the wall, remaining out of view. Then she peered around the corner.
Alec stood beside a massive machine, his attention on the cast-iron bridge that rose overhead, twenty feet in length, with steel pillars supporting each end. She didn’t know anything about the tools required for cutting stone into grave markers, but it didn’t take a genius to understand how this one worked.
Suspended from the center of its bridge was a circular saw, at least six feet in diameter. Rusty, broken teeth fringed the outer edge. It was large enough to cut blocks of granite into narrow slabs.
Or human bodies into little messy slivers.
She worked her throat against a knot of fear.
The machine didn’t function. None of the junk left behind was operational. Unless someone had fixed it? Was there a mechanic on the team?
“What’s it going to be?” Alec folded his arms across his chest. “Your hands? Or your feet? Or you can keep your extremities and tell us the location of the hard drive.”