Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,18

as I just kept my gaze fixed on the car which was now several blocks away from us.

With the lockdown still in full force, there weren't many cars on the street as there weren't that many essential workers still allowed to leave their homes for work. And as much as it frustrated me, I guessed Saint had a point about us not riding the sedan's ass the whole way there, but it still made me nervous as fuck in case we lost him.

Predictably, we headed into the depths of Hemlock City and Saint begrudgingly drew closer to the sedan as Jonas took various turns, the chance of us losing sight of him increasing.

Eventually, Jonas pulled off of a darkened street into an underground parking lot beneath an innocuous looking office building which towered overhead and didn't even have any signage on the front of it. There was just a glass front to a barren looking reception area where four armed guards lingered far enough away from the doors not to draw notice, but they were easy enough to see if you knew what you were looking for.

"What is this place?" Monroe asked, leaning forward between the chairs so that he could peer out of the windshield as Saint took a turn around the block and parked up in a shadowy side street.

We definitely weren't supposed to park here, but Saint had put fake plates on the car and he couldn't give a fuck about getting a fine.

"I researched every single building that was listed in the Serenity Pharmaceuticals repertoire," Saint replied with a faint frown on his brow. "This one wasn't on that list. So I'd say it's the place they don't want anyone to know about. The place where their ethical standpoint takes a backseat and they conduct the kind of research they don't want the media to find out about."

"Great. So it's an evil lab?" Kyan asked casually, like he came across evil labs every other day.

"Why must you always reduce everything to a crass, layman's description?" Saint tossed at him, but Kyan didn't bother to reply.

I glanced back at him and found him gripping his baseball bat tightly as he stared up at the building in question. My gaze lingered on the tattoo which wrapped around the ring finger on his left hand, the wedding ring he could never take off, and my chest tightened as I considered it. I’d made my peace with the idea of the two of them being married for the most part, but I couldn’t deny it awoke a level of jealousy in me that I struggled to banish entirely sometimes.

"What now?" I asked, happy to follow Saint's lead in this. He was the man with the plan after all and I knew if anyone could figure out how to get Tatum back into our arms against the odds, then it was him.

"Now we mask up, cut the power to that building, and go get our girl," he replied simply. We all knew this was going to be anything but simple, but we also wouldn’t turn back now for all the treasure in the world.

"They'll have a back-up generator in a place this important to them," Monroe pointed out, drumming his fingers against his knee as he assessed the different ways this might go.

"So we'll cut the power from that too," Saint said simply. "And once they're cowering in the dark, we'll strike. They won’t even know what hit them."

I smirked as I accepted the ski and gas masks from him and deftly strapped them on. We looked like monsters wearing this shit, but that was okay by me. Because I got the feeling that monsters were exactly what we needed to be if we were going to get our girl back.

I sat in bed, draining a cup of hot tea as I avoided looking my pain meds in the eye. I’d been given some sort of drug cocktail which had perked me up overnight and I had a fierce resolve to take nothing more until I absolutely had to. The drugs were cutting edge and no doubt had been given to me just in time to save my freaking life because I’d been close to puking up a lung last night. Now I just felt weak, dizzy. But the pain had eased and death didn’t feel like it was breathing down my neck today.

“-a week, then we can expose her to it again,” an anxious female voice sounded out in the