Reign of Wrath (Dirty Broken Savages #3)(85)

Something monstrous rises up inside me on the heels of that agony though. I feel like I’m about to explode out of my skin. I’ve never wanted to kill someone as much as I want to kill Julian fucking Maduro in this moment.

“Fuck you,” I spit, letting all my rage and hatred come out in those two words.

Julian sneers. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he says. “You and that bitch I married. Her pussy was the only thing I needed, and I should have gotten rid of her when she gave me what I wanted.”

Blood roars in my ears, and I can barely hear Julian as he keeps talking, over the pulse pounding rage that I feel.

“Doesn’t your friend mean more to you than money?” he’s saying, taunting us all now. “I thought you were all family or some stupid shit like that. Would you really let him die over money that doesn’t even fucking belong to you?”

He sounds angry, but so sure of himself. So sure he has the upper fucking hand. He knows how much we care about each other and that this is the best way to manipulate us.

Rage boils up inside me, and if there was a way to reach through the phone and kill someone, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Out of frame, he does something else to Priest, and we hear the grunt of pain that follows.

I stare hard at the phone, taking in what I can see, and then, all of a sudden, I have a moment of perfect clarity. Like all the desperation and anger and worry distills down into something that points me to exactly what I need to see.

There’s a window off to the side in the room where Julian is holding Priest. Just in the corner of the window, I can see a green highway sign. I can’t read what the sign says, but that doesn’t matter. The building has a view of the highway, which means there aren’t any other structures on that side of it to block the view.

Only the last row of buildings in this area are close enough to see the highway, and there are only two in that row. One of them is boarded up and abandoned, and I don’t think Julian would have taken the time to pry the boards off the windows and doors when he had Priest in tow and knew we would be coming after him.

Which means he has to be in one place.

“Give me my money back, or I’ll kill him,” Julian says. “And I’ll fucking enjoy it.” He ends the call, and the screen goes black again.

Knox looks like he’s about to explode, and Gage and Ash just look angry and sick. I look at all three of them.

“I know where Priest is.”





36





River





“What do you mean you know where he is?” Gage asks. He’s frowning, but there’s a spark of hope in his eyes that I’m telling the truth.

“I saw the window when Julian was gloating,” I tell him. “I could see a highway sign. Only two buildings here have a view of the highway.”

I explain to him about the one building being boarded up, and how Julian would probably have been too desperate to try to un-board it. Which leaves one building for us to check.

Gage looks at me with intense respect on his face. There’s stark relief in Ash’s eyes, and Knox looks like he’s ready to break into that building and start killing people.

I feel the same way.

We get back in the car because it’s faster than walking, and I get us to that building in record time, parking a little ways off so we can scope the place out.

Julian’s had enough time to set something up if he wanted to, so we have to play this carefully, even though I know we all just want to run in and start shooting.

There’s a guard posted outside the building, and it hits me that this must be a spot that Julian knows well. It’s not random that he chose this place. This is probably the spot Lorenzo used for his trafficking business. That’s why Julian brought Priest here. Because there are already guards around this place.

Knox is already moving before any of us can come up with a plan. He moves more quietly than I would’ve thought possible for someone his size, slipping up behind the guard before the man has time to turn around and see him.

The guard has about two seconds to struggle before Knox snaps his neck and leaves him in a heap on the ground.

We move up to his body, and Ash rummages around until he comes up with a key card.

“Good work,” Gage murmurs. He takes the card from Ash and slips it into the lock on the door. The sensor light on it flashes green, and the door clicks open.

We slip inside, trying to be quiet and not give ourselves away just yet.

It’s a big fucking place. There are corridors crisscrossing through it, and lots of random rooms and alcoves and dead ends.

We can’t move as fast as I’d want to like this, since we don’t want to tip anyone off that we’re here, and it’s frustrating.

Every time we open a door and find nothing but boxes or bags and tarps behind it, it’s like a knife in my damn heart.

But as we move toward the back of the building, the sound of Julian’s voice becomes audible. He’s talking to someone. Monologuing, really, which means he’s probably tormenting Priest. The thought of it makes my heart leap right back up into my throat, and I grit my teeth as we keep moving forward.

After another moment, Knox peers around a corner up ahead of us and holds up a hand to stop us.

“Guards,” he murmurs in a low voice when we gather around him. “At least five of them, lined up in the hallway with a door at the end. That has to be where Julian is holding Priest.”