Unleashing Sin - A. M. Wilson Page 0,84
here. If we hurry, we can make it before the next man shows up. Get in and get out.”
“Yeah,” he answers darkly.
Chapter Twenty-One
Shelby
Fury infuses me to my bones. I look over at Clarissa beside me in the back of the SUV, her features lost and forlorn. She looks worse than the last time I saw her, skinnier, paler, higher than a kite. I didn’t know they had her sister. She wasn’t there when I was. I would have known.
I shiver at the thought of someone I loved locked away with me, one another used to torture the other into submission. How evil are the men in charge to use family as a means of compliance? Fire licks through me at the thought of their comeuppance. It might not be today, it might not be for years, but eventually, they will pay.
I watch through the darkened windshield and shadows of the night as Alex approaches a man walking suspiciously across the darkened lot across the street. Elias sits in the driver’s seat, his earbud in to listen to hushed conversations across the way. The grossly potbellied balding man turns ramrod straight and changes his trajectory away from Alex and slinks back into the gloomy darkness. Elias chuckles humorlessly.
“He told him he was a cop. The man admitted he was the eleven o’clock. We’re a go.” His icy blue stare meets mine in the rearview. “Hopefully, only a few minutes now.”
Clarissa whimpers beside me, and I wrap her tight.
We wait.
Minutes trickle past like a summer sun shower, but the tension rising in the car is more like the wind before a storm. Elias’s knuckles blanch on the steering wheel, and he whispers a harsh expletive.
“What’s going on?” I release Clarissa and grip the back of the driver’s seat.
“Fucking hell. Sin, what’s happening?”
More waiting. More minutes pass. More rapid heartbeats and mounting blood pressure.
“He’s not responding.” Elias tears a hand through his blond hair.
I dive between the front seats and snag the stun gun I left wedged near the console.
“I’m going.”
“Like fuck you are. Stay here,” he growls, but I already have the rear door open and my legs through. I meet his eyes as he turns in his seat and inject as much bravado as I can into my schooled features.
“You can’t leave the two of us out here. If anyone comes this way, we’ll both end up right back in the hell you’ve saved us from, and all of this will be for nothing. We’d never be able to fight them off.”
“What makes you think you’ll fare any better inside?”
“Alex is in there. He just needs a distraction.”
“It’s suicide,” he fires back.
Exactly the word I was trying to avoid thinking about while at the same time knowing it’s the pillar of my courage. Two years I’ve been crippled by strange men and their control. I was left for dead, only to fight my way back to the land of the living. The only person I had in my life from before is gone and never coming back. If I lose Alex too…
I’d be a fool not to try to get him out alive.
At least if something happens to Alex and me, then Clarissa will have Elias. He’ll take care of her with the same compassion he showed me. He’d do it in our honor.
The most I can muster is a lame shrug.
“I have to try.”
“Fuck.” His head slams against the headrest. “I have to let you do this, don’t I? What other option is there?”
“I’m glad you’re coming around to my way of things.” I smile weakly.
“You sound just like him, you know that?” The fondness of his voice warms my chilled spirit.
“If you aren’t out in ten minutes, Richard is sending a squad,” Elias adds. “He thinks it’s possible he’s held up in a place he can’t talk to us.”
“That’s the hope.”
I strap the stun gun to my wrist and close the rear door without making a noise. Once I cross the street, the shadows along the far left of the rows of rooms seem like the best option. I do my best to blend in, but I’ve never done this sort of thing before, and I swear my heartbeat is loud enough to be heard clear across the parking lot. Traffic sounds and horns blare from the highway behind the run-down building, providing both coverage and hiding anyone who might be lurking.
Twenty feet from the door, I pause and allow my eyes to adjust. A light above the front