Author's Preface
T he van swung around a corner and began passing rows of aging houses, some old enough to have been built in the early 1900 s. “Keep Out” was sprayed in red across a mold-stained piece of plywood in front of a home with the roof caving in. A black dog vaulted against a chain-link fence surrounding a two-story frame with broken windows.
“Gat Crawlers,” seemed to be a popular tag painted across the structures, both abandoned and inhabited.
This used to be a wealthy neighborhood, Kellen gathered after the third dilapidated mansion they passed.
“What a shithole,” someone in the van commented.
The vehicle pulled to an abrupt halt in front of the faded number, 338 . And like perfect programming, five designated team members exited the van, Tim leading. Then two others, headed for the Dodge Challenger parked on the roadside several houses down.
Arlo caught Kellen’s arm like a reflex. “We’ gonna hang back jus’ a minute,” he said quickly. Then, just as quickly, “Look, one a’ two things gonna happen. One, they’ gonna sweep the house and clear it quick. Two, they’ finna have a shootout on the fron’ porch that you don’t wanna be caught the middle of.”
Kellen glanced over his shoulder at the open sliding door within steps of where he stood.
“You’ out-gunned, Eastland.” Arlo’s eyes lowered meaningfully to the Glock strapped to Kellen’s hip—then to his own automatic rifle.
Kellen said nothing as he slowly took his seat again.
It was burning. Burning all the way through his core as he forced himself to stay there motionless—that feeling of desperate urgency. The fact that at any moment, that house could erupt into gunfire. And Alexei’s red dot was still showing over that address on the phone in Kellen’s hand.
The five-member team outside fell into tactical array around the front door to 338 Sycamore. The house loomed out in front of them like a gray ghost: a 1920 s colonial, two stories, paint chipping, boarded-up windows.
Poor light illuminated the scene as one of the shadowy members—most likely Tim—stepped out in front of the door and raised a hand to knock on it.
“That thing got people livin’ in it?” Arlo muttered beside Kellen. He was leaning hard to peer out through one of the tiny side windows of the van. He straightened in his seat and adjusted his helmet. Then he leaned over the other way and tapped Kellen on the shoulder. “’Fit check.”
In a moment of distracted surrender, Kellen let the officer check his face covering and hood.
The door to the house was opening. Someone was standing just within—a teenager, perhaps. Skinny, wearing a simple T-shirt, shorts, and a du-rag.
There was an exchange, one that didn’t look hostile. Then the kid stepped aside and let Tim pass. Two of the four others followed him in.
Then there was quiet.
“Too easy,” Arlo murmured.
And just seconds later, the first round of gunfire went off.
Kellen saw one of the two officers stationed outside the door dart inside the house. The front door was open.
The snap on Kellen’s holster popped free. His fingers found the grip, the safety on the trigger.
“The hell you goin’? ” Arlo seized Kellen’s arm, only in time to stop him inches from the sliding door. “That sound was a goddamn full auto, an’ you best believe Tim an’ De’Angelo weren’ the first to fire!”
“He’s in there,” Kellen breathed, shaking off Arlo’s grip. He ducked out of the van right as the second round started up. Then the sound of return fire came—two—round shots, undoubtedly police.
Kellen crossed a weed-tangled lawn in four strides, then mounted the two concrete steps leading to the front door. He met eyes with the SWAT officer outside before he wordlessly crossed the threshold into the house.
Pot. The smell was overwhelming. Drywall, peeling paint, and ancient wooden floorboards reeked of it. The lightbulb hanging at the center of the ceiling was shot out, leaving the foyer space poorly lit by a light fixture around the corner.
Both hands gripping his lowered weapon, Kellen put his back to a deteriorating panel of wainscoting and moved closer to the hallway exiting the front foyer. The hallway ran both ways. To the left, the near banister of a stairway was visible. To the right, there was flooring indicative of a kitchen. No one was in sight.
Another round of automatic gunshots went off. The sound was coming from deeper in the house, to the right.
Kellen made a left down the hallway. Weapon raised, he checked his periphery at the base of the stairs. Empty. But there was a trap door to the left signifying a basement stairway. One of the hatch doors was open.
A bead of sweat tracked across the exposed portion of Kellen’s temple. He flattened himself to the wall and took out his phone. If the red dot was as accurate as it had been last time, Alexei was in the northeast part of the house. But that said nothing about which floor he was on.
If he was even still wearing the tracker.
Kellen put his phone away, and his hands tightened on his Glock. He glanced up the stairs leading to the second floor, then back at the trap door on the other side.
The basement was his best option, something in Kellen’s mind told him with no rationale.
The gunfire went suddenly silent. And in the quiet, Kellen heard a settling creak in the floorboards behind him.
His back pressed flat to the wall again, finger slipping soundlessly over the trigger of his Glock.
One second. Two. Three.
And then a footstep. Followed by another. Approaching from the direction Kellen had just come from. Quick, steady, weighted.
Kellen’s weapon was aimed at the intruder’s head the moment the figure stepped out in front of him. He was met with the barrel of an HK MP 5 .
“You crazy-ass mothafucker,” Arlo breathed, lowering his automatic rifle.
Kellen quickly lowered his weapon also. They stared at each other for a moment in the eerie silence.
Kellen started for the basement hatch.
“The fuck you goin’?”
“I need to find him,” Kellen responded.
“Nah, man. You needa get yo’ ass back to the truck.”
There was no dust on the bare-board steps at the top of the basement stairway. Dark as it looked down there, this way was frequented. “I’m not leaving until I find him,” came Kellen’s murmured response. He started down the stairs.
“What the hell make you think he’ down there? ” Arlo whispered harshly. “Man―”
“You don’t need to come.” Kellen stopped briefly to switch on the flashlight attachment on his Glock. He continued down the stairs.
Every step creaked in the silence. A second set of footsteps joined his own on the stairs.
“I’s tol’ to watch you’ back. Where I work, we do what we’ tol’, ” Arlo was murmuring as he followed.
There was light at the bottom of the stairs. As soon as Kellen made out the dim yellow glow, he switched off his flashlight. In the almost pitch black of the stairway, he heard Arlo shift his rifle. They continued to the bottom.
Silence. Silence so flawless, it was like no other living thing existed in the world.
Arlo switched on a small flashlight and shined it quickly across the space surrounding them. Empty. Chairs stacked in a corner. Bare metal tables pushed against the wall. Arlo’s flashlight centered on something standing in the open floorspace. “That medical equipment?” he whispered.
Of some kind, Kellen concluded before Arlo switched his flashlight off again. Tubing and sterile plastic packages. Easily drug paraphernalia.
Kellen took his phone out and checked the tracking dot. For a paralyzed second, he simply stared at it. The dot had moved. It had moved closer to the center of the house—very close to where Kellen currently stood.
Kellen’s fingers found the switch on his flashlight attachment, and he turned it back on. He scanned the area Arlo had just checked. There was a door to the right, blocked by one of the metal tables. And directly forward was a hallway.
“Alexei?” The word was hushed, low. Kellen started for the hallway, following the source of the yellow light.
Empty. No one was in the hallway. The yellow light was coming from an opening on the other side. Doors lined the passage all the way down. Doors with windows.
“This basement big as hell,” Arlo was murmuring as he stepped over to one of the dark windows and pressed his flashlight against it. He fell abruptly silent. Then, “Eastland, the hell is this?”
Kellen retraced a few cautious steps and looked into the window Arlo was holding his flashlight to.
That was not drug paraphernalia.
The first thing to register in Kellen’s mind as he looked through the dark glass was the full-sized operating room light fixed to the ceiling. Then the bare metal table below it. An IV hanger. Outdated patient monitor. A manual anesthesia setup. Other makeshift or long-expired medical equipment Kellen had not once in his entire career crossed paths with.
“They got an undergroun’ hospital runnin’ down here?” Arlo whispered, turning to meet eyes with Kellen.
A hospital was one thing. An operating room like that was something else entirely.
Sick, tense dread swelled up in the pit of Kellen’s stomach. He raised his weapon and started again for the light at the end of the hallway.
Arlo was following, but Kellen barely registered the sound of the accompanying footsteps. The feeling in his gut tightened, spread, tightened, like a poison his heart was gradually pumping through his bloodstream.
The last step to the end of the hallway felt devoid of air. Kellen put his back silently to the wall as he approached the edge. The beam of the flashlight attached to the barrel of his gun illuminated the opposing corner of the room. The floor, the wall, the ceiling. Bars. Narrow metal bars, like those of livestock fencing.
It was blind and miscalculated, the way Kellen stepped around the corner. Like something inside him already knew that what he would find in that room would not hurt him.
Cages. Metal wire and padlocks. Lining the walls and stacked like dog crates. Length barely sufficient to lie down in. Height too short to stand up in. And staring silently back from within each occupied enclosure: a person.
Shuddering weakness rippled all the way through Kellen’s body. His right arm wavered as he lowered his weapon. Suffocating for air, he raised a hand to his face and drew the fabric covering down to his chin. He slipped his hood off his head, away from the slick sweat thickly coating his neck.
Still, the air wouldn’t come.
They were afraid. Every one of them. They sat crouched at the far ends of their cages, some huddled together where occupied enclosures stood side by side. Wide eyes, silence.
“Holy hell, ” Arlo breathed, his footsteps echoing in the heavy quiet. “What in the fucked-up name a’…” His voice trailed into silence.
Kellen drew a faltering breath. His finger released the safety switch on his gun, and he raised the light to pass across the cages.
Hospital gowns. Wrist tags. Averted faces.
“They’ all Asian,” Arlo whispered. “Filipinos, bet.”
A deafening rattle cut the air.
Kellen’s flashlight darted in the direction of the sound. There was a hand pressed flat against the cage near the far-left wall. Closer than any of the other captives were standing, a face stared back at Kellen. Long dark hair framed narrow, chiseled features: young like the others, early to mid twenties. Depthless eyes fixed Kellen’s gaze with tangible force. No fear. “Kagaway,” she whispered. She hit the wire a second time. Hard, echoing. “Kagaway.” A third time. “Kagaway.”
“Shit, someone’ gonna hear that,” Arlo breathed.
Kellen barely registered Arlo’s grip on his arm or the direction he was being pulled in. He couldn’t take his eyes off the beady black stare fixing him. The way those eyes shifted, face motionless, to follow him back to the hallway. The sensationless feeling they delivered with the tangible connection they made. Numb, empty, black silence.
“Kagaway.”
It snapped like a physical thing the moment the hallway severed their eye contact.
Reality came back in. Sharpening awareness of what he had just seen, the place he was standing in, the explanation his mind formed to connect the two.
Then, air.
Quietly gasping, Kellen replaced his face covering. He cast a glance over his shoulder—toward the room, then meeting eyes with Arlo. “I need to find Alexei,” Kellen breathed. And right as he spoke, another round of gunshots went off from overhead.