The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,195
There was a flicker of static over the line as he added, his voice softer, “My dad…”
“I know,” I said, leading the others out of the room. “Don’t worry.”
One of Mercer’s men was waiting in the hallway, half-dressed, half-wild with adrenaline from having been woken from a dead sleep. He fired off a shot that went too wide. One of the Kin lifted him into the air, then slammed him back down onto the floor, stunning him.
Priyanka cast an anxious look my way.
“I know,” I told her. “But if they’re not here, then we’ll search the next one, and the one after that.”
“He’s going to move them,” she whispered. “Once we hit this headquarters, he’ll know. If they’re even still…”
She didn’t finish her sentence. Alive.
We had slowly worked our way through Mercer’s known warehouses and facilities, searching for any sign of Roman and Lana. Mercer wasn’t traveling with Lana now, which gave me hope that she and her brother were still together. In all the times Max had tried to go fishing for their exact location, he’d only seen darkness.
“They are,” I told her. “They’re alive, and we’re going to find them. But we’re also going to get these kids out of here, no matter what.”
She straightened. There wasn’t a flicker of doubt on her face, not one, as she said, “You’re damn right we are, and that’ll be enough.”
We’ll be enough.
The interior of the warehouse was exactly as Priyanka and Max had described it: a single hallway of rooms and Mercer’s office, which was currently locked. We’d waited, sending Max fishing for Mercer, too, every day for the last week and a half, until it was clear he’d left Blue Star’s primary headquarters here for a trip to meet up with Moore and his people.
Priyanka had wanted him here; she’d wanted to burn the building down and force him to watch, bound and gagged, in the back of a car heading for the nearest UN checkpoint. But I think we both knew that would never be enough; someone would rise to fill the void he’d left behind and assume control of his interests. If we wanted Mercer out of the game, we needed to raze the foundation of his business and uproot all the criminal dealings he kept so carefully hidden.
We were here to save the children he’d stolen, but we were also here to recover files and records of his business dealings and associates. And if what evidence we found wasn’t enough for the law, we’d subject him to our own.
Priyanka gripped the lock on his office door. Before she stepped inside, she caught my arm. “Come together, leave together?”
“Come together, leave together,” I promised. “Lisa, Jen—you’re with Priya.”
The two girls peeled off. I waved the rest of the group forward to search the other rooms for the kids. “Head back to Jacob when you finish!”
I got a round of acknowledgments from them as I ran on, rounding the corner of the hall. According to Priyanka, Mercer—the paranoid bastard—traveled with a massive security force at all times. I felt the lack of them now, as I easily took care of the one lone man who tried firing on me from behind the shelter of a nearby doorway. There was a phone on him, but not for long. His screams echoed down to me as I finally found the set of doors I’d been looking for.
The room stopped the breath in my lungs. There were hulking machines in every corner, vibrating with power, even as they idled. A small metal operating table stood directly in front of me, and, behind it, there was a hospital bed and a little black-haired girl resting on it, unmoving. Her skin was a waxy white, as if the blood had drained from her.
For a moment, I wasn’t seeing the little girl there at all. I was seeing Priyanka. Roman.
I clenched my jaw as rage spilled up through me. The monitors and devices on either side of the bed displayed her steady vitals, but I ignored them, focusing instead on the dark-skinned man in the lab coat. His back was to me as he carefully adjusted the girl’s IV drip.
At the sound of my boot squeaking against the tile, he froze.
“Step away from the girl,” I told him, keeping my gun trained on him. “And put your hands up.”
“We found the kids,” Vida said over the comm. Underscoring her voice was the sound of clattering and a scuffle. “But Roman and Lana aren’t here.”