Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,114

she walked across the asphalt, the rain hitting the hood of her windbreaker in a disorganized staccato. Ducking her hand under the loose nylon of the jacket, she felt for her holstered gun and kept her palm on the butt.

The door creaked open and slammed shut again, another puff of that stink releasing out of the interior. Swallowing through throat spasms, she had to fight to keep going and not because there was wind in her face.

When she stopped in front of the door, the opening and closing ceased, as if now that she was on the verge of entering, it didn’t need to catch her attention and draw her in anymore.

So help her God, if Pennywise was on the other side…

Glancing around to check there were no red balloons lolling in the area, she reached out for the door.

I just have to know, she thought as she opened the way in. I need to… know.

Peering around the door, she saw absolutely nothing, and yet was frozen by all that she confronted. Pure evil, the kind of thing that abducted and murdered children, that slaughtered the innocent, that enjoyed the suffering of the just and merciful, pushed at her body and then penetrated it, radiation that was toxic passing through to her bones.

Coughing, she stepped back and covered her mouth and nose with her elbow. After a couple of deep breaths into her sleeve, she fumbled with her phone to call Bill again.

Before he could say anything over the whirring in the background, she bit out, “You need to come—”

“I’m already halfway there.”

“Good.”

“What’s going on—”

Jo ended the call and got out her flashlight, triggering the beam. Stepping forward again, she shouldered the door open and trained the spear of illumination into the space.

The light was consumed.

Sure as if she were shining it into a bolt of thick fabric, the fragile illumination was no match for what was before it.

The threshold she stepped over was nothing more than weather stripping, but the inch-high lip was a barrier that felt like an obstacle course she could barely surmount—and then there was the stickiness on the floor. Pointing the flashlight to the ground, she picked up one of her feet. Something like old motor oil dripped off her running shoe, the sound of it finding home echoing in the empty space.

She found the first of the buckets on the left. Home Depot, orange and white—and the logo was smudged with a rusty, translucent substance that turned her stomach.

The beam wobbled as she went over and looked into the cylinder, her hand shaking. Inside, there was a gallon of glossy, gleaming… red… liquid. And in the back of her throat, she tasted copper—

Jo wheeled around with the flashlight.

The two men who had entered the facility and come up behind her without a sound loomed as if they had been born of the darkness itself, wraiths conjured from her nightmares, fed by the cold spring rain, clothed in the night. One of them had a goatee and tattoos at one of his temples, a cigarette between his lips, a downright nasty expression on his hard face. The other wore a Boston Red Sox hat and a long coat, the tails of which blew in slow motion even though the wind coming in from the open door was choppy. Both had long black blades holstered handles down on their chest, and she knew there were more weapons where she couldn’t see them.

They had come to kill her. Tracked her as she’d moved away from her car. Seen her as she had not seen them.

Jo stumbled back and tried to get out her gun, but her sweaty palms had her dropping her phone and struggling to keep the flashlight—

And then she couldn’t move.

Even as her brain ordered her feet to run, her legs to run, her body to run, nothing obeyed the panic commands, her muscles twitching under the lockdown of some invisible, external force of will, her bones aching, her breath turning into a pant. Pain firework’d her brain, a headache sizzling through her skull.

Opening her mouth, she tried to scream—

* * *

As Butch O’Neal stared at the woman’s vacant, frozen fear, he had a wicked-odd thought. For some reason, he recalled that his given name was Brian. Why this was relevant in any way was unclear, and he chalked up the cognitive drive-by to the fact that she kind of reminded him of his first cousin on his mother’s side. That connection wasn’t particularly relevant,