Damaged (Boys of Winter #2) - Sheridan Anne Page 0,77

be guarded, but when we find it empty, we storm straight in.

My gaze sweeps over the room, trying to figure out where the false wall is. Grayson walks around, skimming his fingertips over the ugly cream paint, feeling for any abnormalities while I scan the paintings on each side of the room. Three of them are modern and bright while the painting on the wall directly across from the bed is old and worn.

“There,” I tell him, pointing out the painting of the woman standing in an overgrown garden wearing nothing but a sheet and struggling to hold it up as her left tit hangs free. “There’s something off about that painting.”

Grayson walks straight to it and roams his fingers over the frame, his brows furrowing as the seconds tick by. He shakes his head, not figuring out how it’s supposed to open a false wall when he gets frustrated and tears the painting off the wall and throws it carelessly against the back of the room.

Grayson scoffs seeing the small button on the wall right where the painting used to be and without hesitation, he presses it and takes a step back. The false wall peels back and I stare in astonishment. I’ve seen a few secret doors like this since I came here and it’s something that I’ll never tire of.

The secret door opens to a dark room and Grayson instantly looks back at me with a strange cautiousness in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re ready to see what’s down here? It’s not going to be pretty.”

I give him a hard, determined stare. “I can handle it.”

Grayson watches me a second longer, but it’s precious seconds wasted that we could be using to save these girls. I push forward, shouldering past him into the dark room, only the floor drops away and I begin to tumble.

Grayson’s hand shoots out like lightning and catches me by the waistband of my ripped jeans. “Careful,” he says, almost like a curse, pulling out his phone and turning on his flashlight app. Light filters through the secret room and I realize that I was only moments from falling down a steep set of metal stairs.

I let out a breath and try not to focus on the smell. It’s just as bad as the cells that Sam kept me in. There’s not going to be anything good down here.

We reach the bottom of the stairs and Grayson slides in front of me, not knowing what we might find. He raises his flashlight into the small room and we find four cramped cells, each with girls laying naked on the floor with not even enough room to sit up properly.

I suck in a gasp.

These girls are in dog cages.

“Oh, no, no, no, no.”

I race to the first cage and instantly drop to my knees, the desperation sitting heavily on my chest. “We’re going to get you out of here,” I call, pulling on the metal bars and frantically searching around as the girls squint against the light.

Grayson manically searches the room, tearing at fixtures and scanning every little crevice trying to find the keys. “I can’t fucking find them,” he roars, the frustration sinking through him as we listen to the gunshots above, and while he wants nothing more than to free these girls, he also wants to be upstairs, having his boys’ backs.

The girl in the cage behind me raises her arm and points across the room. “There,” she murmurs, her voice a breathy, exhausted whisper.

Grayson’s flashlight whips around to the section of wall that she’s pointing to and we find four small keys attached to a single nail in the wall.

Grayson races for it.

He throws two keys at me before dropping down in front of the other two girls and quickly trying to figure out which key belongs to each cage. We get two of the cages open before he takes the keys from my hand and points back at the open cages. “Here, you start getting them out,” he says while darting across to the other cages.

I don’t hesitate and reach into the first one. The girl is young, maybe only fifteen. She holds up her hand and desperately latches onto my wrist. “Please,” she whispers. “Get us out of here.”

“We’re working on it,” I promise her. “You’re going home.”

I awkwardly get her out as she cries in pain, her body cramping and malnourished after being down here for so long. Her legs are wobbly, and she has no choice