Chapter 35 In which we blow shit up

The drive takes too fucking long. I watch the blinking dot of the abandoned medical building get closer and closer on my phone. Maddox is driving like a madman, weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off.

Under normal circumstances, I might have told him to slow the fuck down, but not here. Not now. I’m pretty sure he would rip my head off if I did.

The interior of the vehicle is thick with angry alpharomones, clinging to my nostrils, clogging my lungs and making it hard for me to breathe. My beta scent is pumping out of me, trying to soothe them, but it’s not even close to working because I’m just as worked up as they are. Angry. Terrified. Anxious.

“One minute,” I say into the tense car. Luca nods and radios to the other car, full of Falcone underlings ready and willing to do what needs to be done.

“Pull over here,” I say, tapping Maddox’s shoulder. His hands tighten on the wheel. He knows Sadie is still two blocks away from us, but he pulls over.

“How we gonna do this?” Logan asks. He has his medical bag at his feet. He already went through it, made sure everything he thought Sadie might need is near the top, readily accessible.

Based on what she told us this asshole did to her before, I’m pretty sure drugs to flush her system are at the top. Anything that might help to keep whatever ‘medication’ the psycho doctor has given her from taking.

Swift’s been quiet on the drive over, flipping a knife between his fingers as he focused on sending our girl as much reassurance as he could. Now he grins, all vicious teeth and violence. “We go in and get our girl back. Eviscerate anyone who stands in our way.”

“I like that plan,” Luca says, still looking shaky as hell. His normally tan skin is pale, and he has dark circles under his eyes, even though it’s only been hours since Sadie was taken from us, but feeling their bond snap has drained him, shaken him. His expression is just as vicious as Swift’s.

Maddox looks at me. “We got any idea how many guards there are?”

“Inside?” I shake my head. “No clue. Outside,” I pull up a schematic of the building and they all gather around it. “We got four sets of two guards at ground level. One on each side of the building. There’s also a watcher on the building opposite.” I made sure we stopped out of sight of him when we arrived.

“I’ll handle him,” Swift says, already fading away into the dark. Maddox lets him go.

“They aren’t exactly being subtle,” he murmurs. “Do we know if anyone else is inside besides Sadie?”

I know what he means. This is a lot of guards for just one person. So either they really need her for whatever fucked up thing they’re doing or there is more than just her inside being tested on. Again, I shake my head. “I don’t. I wish I did.”

I hate not being able to give them the information we need.

“Where’s the most likely place they’ll be keeping her?” Maddox asks. I shift the image on the screen. “Third floor, there’s a bunch of smaller bedroom sized rooms. Or the basement, where there’s a similar layout.”

“Fuck.” Maddox runs his fingers over his mouth. “No way to narrow it down?”

Again, I shake my head. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could do more.”

Our prime slaps his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Not your fault. You fucking found her. That’s the important part.” He shrugs, looking at the building farther down the street. “Besides, we’re going to kill all of them, anyway. It’ll take a little longer to find her, but we will. Luca and I will go high, Logan and Ethan go low. Swift will take our guys and be the distraction.”

Distraction is putting it kindly. I’m pretty sure Swift is going to rip through them like a fucking wrecking ball, killing indiscriminately. I think he stepped out of his workroom with about ten bombs nestled in a black backpack. Maddox pins all of us with a look. “Keep coms open at all times. When any of us find her, we say, immediately. Logan, if it’s us-”

“I’ll come running. Immediately .”

I nod. “And I’ll make sure he gets there.”

Our resident doctor pauses. “We don’t know what state she’ll be in when we find her. It’s likely that she’ll just be drugged, based on what they did to her before. But they might have done something… else.” He doesn’t want to say, and I kind of wish he would, because now my brain is swarming with images of what else they could have done to her. Fucking fuck. Logan swallows thickly. “If she’s injured, just be careful if you try to move her. We don’t want to make it worse.”

They both nod, grimly. Swift’s voice filters into our earpieces. “Come on, fuckers, we doing this?” He sounds far too excited about this, but then Swift has always enjoyed this part of being us. The mayhem and the bloodshed. “Fair warning,” he says as we move toward the building. “As soon as I know you have Cherrybomb out, I’m blowing that fucker up.”

“Of course you are,” Maddox murmurs, palming his gun. “Clear the way for us in two minutes, Swift.”

“On it.”

We move on silent feet down the street, pausing just out of sight. “Knock out the cameras,” Maddox murmurs. My finger’s already over the execute button. At the same moment I hit it, there’s a faint pop, too quiet to raise suspicion and then the thud of one body, then two, hitting the ground.

After a moment, Maddox motions us forward. Swift cleared the front entrance for us, and I know he’ll get the guards on the sides and back before entering the building with the killing team.

The door isn’t even fucking locked. We’re able to just slide right through. Maddox lifts his gun and shoots the two guards in the first room in the head, easy as can be. “Stairs are the door to the right and fifty feet down the hall,” I direct. The four of us take off in that direction.

Once in the stairwell, we separate. Them going up, me and Logan going down. There’s a guard at the base of the stairs. Logan shoots him with no remorse.

These assholes took our girl and they will fucking pay with their lives.

Just as we open the door, the building rocks and shudders. Swift has joined the party. “Fucking psycho,” Logan mutters. “He’s not supposed to blow up the building until we’re out of it.”

I shake my head. “I think that was the one he was playing sniper from.”

“Distraction.”

“Distraction,” I confirm, stepping into the hall, gun at the ready. Logan is right on my tail, gun primed. Over our heads, there’s the sound of shouts, and the rapid repeat of gunfire. I swear I hear Swift’s maniacal laughter drifting down the stairs.

Four guards come barreling around the corner at the end of the hall, then freeze when they see us. Their mistake. We take them out in quick succession.

There’s the faint sound of an omega whine, a barely there whimper that just barely reaches my ears. “Sadie,” I say to Logan, taking off at a sprint, leaping over the fallen guards, and narrowly avoiding sliding on a puddle of blood.

Logan follows slower, taking the time to glance in the open doors, checking for our girl, being thorough, but I don’t have the patience for it. She’s farther down the hall. I can feel it.

When I round the corner, the hallway’s empty. No guards. No sounds of retreating footsteps, no more omega whines, just Logan’s harsh cry of, “here!” back the way I came. I ran right fucking by her.

A gunshot, far closer than any of the others we’ve heard, has me sprinting back, finding Logan in the doorway, shoulders set, gun raised. “You never should have touched her,” he says before he pulls his trigger.

A second later, he’s rushing into the room, and I’m right on his heels. My gaze sweeps the space, taking in the slumped body of Dr. Funkle on the ground, a neat bullet hole in his head. I have the brief thought that he should have suffered more before I’m taking in more of the room. Except for the dead man, it looks like every doctor’s office I’ve ever been in, and in the center of it all is our omega. My omega.

Relief hits so fucking hard when I set eyes on her. Strapped to a chair and pale as a fucking ghost, but seemingly unharmed. Her clothes are the same ones she was wearing when they took her from the penthouse and, although they’re rumpled, they aren’t covered in blood.

She’s sweating, writhing in pain.

Her scent is off, but that could be a side effect of whatever drugs they gave her. Whatever has her so out of it.

Logan hurries to her side, nimble fingers shaking slightly as he undoes the leather straps holding her to the chair before carefully removing the needle from her arm.

“We found her,” I murmur into my mic, following Logan farther into the room. “We’ve got her.”

“Thank fuck,” Maddox sighs.

“Is she okay?” Luca asks.

“Where?” Swift growls out.

“I don’t know if she’s okay,” I respond, ignoring Swift’s demand, watching as Logan does a quick examination of her, trying to figure out what’s wrong with her. “Is she drugged?”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s blood loss.”

I run my eyes over our girl again. She doesn’t look injured. There’s no puddle of blood under her. “Where is it?”

Logan jerks his chin at a nearby table and I see the neatly stacked blood bags next to a cooler.

“Sadie, mo chuisle ,” Logan says, cupping her cheeks to keep her head from drooping. “Is that your blood?”

I don’t know a lot about how the human body functions, but I do know that four blood bags is too much blood. No wonder she’s pale. Her lips have lost all color. Our girl doesn’t answer, her glassy eyes looking around, like she’s trying to focus but can’t.

Logan leans forward, pressing his forehead to hers. “Please, baby, is that your blood?”

“I-I t-think s-so?” she says slowly, stumbling over the words, brow furrowed in concentration. “I-I’m s-sorry.”

“No, heartbreaker,” I move forward, bending over the chair she’s on, lacing my fingers through hers. “Not your fault. Rest, baby. We’ve got you.” Her eyes flutter closed. I look at Logan. “What do we do?”

He looks torn, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t fucking know. She needs a hospital, but I’m not sure she’ll make it in time.”

“She needs blood?” He gives a tight nod. “Okay. I think we risk it. Put in at least one of those bags.”

Logan’s brows crunch together. “What if it’s Claudia’s blood? Or another beta?”

I clap him on the shoulder. “She was given someone else’s blood for fucking years, Logan, and she still presented as an omega, our omega.” My fingers tighten. “Besides, if you don’t do this, she could die, right?”

His jaw tenses, and he gives a tight nod. “Right.”

“So fucking do it, man. I’d rather have Sadie as a beta than not at all. All of us would.”

Another nod and then he’s moving. He grabs the blood bags and preps it for the transfusion, finding a new needle and carefully inserting it into her skin into the same place the last needle was. His motions are sure and precise. Not taking any chances with our girl. The bag hanging from the long metal pole by the chair is clear, definitely not blood. Logan unhooks it and hangs the blood bag in its place. We both watch as it drips into our girl.

I hold my breath. It’s not like I expected an immediate reaction, but I think I was hoping for something. My fingers are still twined with hers, as Logan packs up the rest of the blood. “We’re gonna have to move her. We need to get her to the hospital.”

I nod without questioning him, tucking my gun in its holster and scooping her slight weight into my arms, cradling her against my chest. Fuck, she feels lighter. Hollowed out. Like a dried out husk of herself.

He grabs the bag and holds it up higher, to let the liquid life flow into our girl even as we move. There’s still the sounds of gunshots, of shouting, but we can’t stay here. “Fuck,” Logan curses. “I really wish we had one more person with us who had a fucking gun.”

“We don’t have time to wait,” I remind him.

He heaves a deep breath and nods. “Right. Yeah. We need to get her to the hospital.”

Logan leads the way to the door. He sets down the cooler of blood and pauses with his hand on the doorknob, tilting his head to listen. Then he yanks the door open and sticks his head out before glancing back at me. “Clear.”

We make our way back the way we came, as quickly as we can. “We’re at the stairs,” I murmur into my mic. “Should be out in less than two. We need to get her to the hospital immediately.”

“Got it,” Maddox replies. “On our way to cover you. When you get to the car, don’t wait for us. Take it and go. We’ll follow.”

Logan lets out a sound of relief, still holding the blood bag over Sadie’s body, making sure there’s a steady drip flowing into her. I swear she looks better already, but I think I’m just fooling myself. I just want her to be better so badly.

Logan once again pauses at the door to the first floor, head tilted, listening. There’s still the faint sounds of gunfire, but Swift must have led them away from us, giving us a chance to get out without running into anyone. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an army of guards on the other side of this door.

“Ready?” Logan breathes, hand tight on the door.

I heft Sadie up higher in my arms and nod. “Ready.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Logan sets the blood bag on Sadie’s stomach, and tugs his gun from his holster. “Run straight for the car,” He demands. I open my mouth to tell him he should take our girl. He’s the medical professional, after all, but he’s already pulling open the door and barreling out, gun first.

I’m right on his heels, bypassing him when he draws up short to fire his gun toward a couple of guards running toward. “Heading for the exit,” I pant out.

“Its clear,” Swift says back, and I have to fight the surprise that he’s even remotely paying attention to our coms. Usually in a situation like this, he’d be so deep in his killing, in his bloodlust, that he’s unresponsive until everyone is dead. But then this situation is unique.

The precious cargo in my arms has made it so.

Maddox and Luca pound into the room we entered the building through. Their eyes focus on Sadie for a second, relief plain in both their faces as they take her in, but I don’t stop, heading right for the door and pushing outside, knowing they’ll protect my back and help me get her out of here.

Swift is waiting on the other side, grinning and covered in blood. He doesn’t have guns in his hands, but knives, dripping red. His smile falters the slightest bit when he sees her pale face, but he doesn’t hesitate to turn and take off in front of me, taking point and drawing gunfire to him. Crazy reckless bastard.

I fucking love him.

My lungs are burning and the muscles of my arms trembling by the time our SUV comes into view. I can hear my pack behind me, hear them fighting the last of the guards. It would have probably been a better idea to have an alpha carry her. They’re stronger and faster than I am. But there’s no way in hell I’ll let my body fail her now, not when we’re so damn close to the car. Not when we’re so damn close to losing her.

“Almost there, heartbreaker. Hang on. We’re going to make sure you’re okay,” I murmur to her. Letting out a breath as I reach the vehicle. I’ve just slid her into the back seat when a concussive boom radiates out from the building we were just in and a legit fireball pierces the sky. The ground under my feet quakes and I stumble, catching myself on the open door, before spinning to see the building go up in flames.

“Didn’t feel like waiting until we were farther away?” Logan growls at Swift, who laughs and shrugs.

“I told you I’d blow it as soon as we were all clear. I waited even longer than that until we got Cherrybomb in the car.”

I mean, he warned us.

“Let’s move,” Maddox roars, sprinting out of an alley. It spurs the rest of us into action, climbing into the car with our injured omega and barreling toward the hospital.