Page 77 of Fall onto me
Foster sweeps his head, looking at Wes with the rage of a thousand suns. “They didn’t crash into that tree by accident, Wes.”
He staggers back a little, hearing the truth about what happened to his best friend. “Wh … what?”
“The Keeper killed them.”
Wes takes Foster’s gun from his waistband, cocks it back, and rushes forward.
25
We rush after Wes, and I catch him on the side of the building. I grab his shoulder, attempting to tamper his anger. “We know this place. Let him lead.” I nod my head back to Foster, who is using the light from his phone to look over the blueprints with Barnes.
He looks down at his hand, to the gun, and back to me. “Yeah, okay …” He tucks it in his pants, trying to catch his breath, but he can’t quite seem too.
“Breathe in deeply through your nose.” I mimic what my therapist showed me. “Out through your mouth.”
There’s a shimmer of tears coating Wes’s eyes. “He was my best friend,” he sighs. “I want to fucking kill the man who did this.” He looks at the gun in his waistband, and his lips tremble.
“Okay, we’ve got it. Follow me.”
Past the parties, drugs, and games. Open doors showing different sins, we walk. With fear and bravery mixed into our bones, we slip past everything in our path to get to where we need to be. Foster leads, stopping in front of the door that’s brought us so much grief.
“It’s here?” I ask, looking around the room as we walk in.
Nothing has changed, besides the new television sitting on the table. It’s a flat screen now, and for a moment, I expect it to turn on, but it doesn’t. Foster moves it carefully, trying not to cause any sounds, and sets it on the ground. The men pick up the small table, and finally, they slide the rug away, revealing a door.
I step forward, watching in horror as they open the pit and reveal a deep, dark, hole. “What now?” I shiver.
Foster looks to me, and for a flash of time, I see regret in his eyes. Regret for me being here. He shakes it off when I nod to the paper.
“Here.” He points to the bottom right corner of the blueprint. “This is the basement plans. We follow straight down the hallway, and there’s a room here,”—he points on the left side—“and another that attaches to it. We could flank each door.”
The blueprint is straightforward. At the bottom of the steps, it goes straight, all the way to the rooms on the right. There’s a fork before you get there, but it only leads underneath the parking lot where another exit is.
Wes shakes his head. “No, we need to go in the same one. That way one of us don’t get grabbed.” He looks to me again, a worried tilt to his brows, but he doesn’t say anything more.
Barnes points to the second door. “If we don’t hear activity at the first, we’ll go in the second, but the plan right now is the first.” His eyes roam over each of us. “This may very well be a trap; there could be a hundred men down there, or just one. This is your final chance to walk away. I’m going down, because I am sick of this twisted fuck destroying the city I work so hard to protect.”
I let out a shaky breath. “I’m coming with.”
“Same.” Foster nods.
Wes takes in a deep breath in through his mouth and lets it out his nose. Close, but not quite. Amid all the chaos, that makes me nearly chuckle.
“Ready?” Foster asks.
I nod, looking at Barnes as he cocks back the hammer of his, but it sticks. “Fuck,” he hisses.
Foster looks back, shaking his head. “Do you have another in the car?”
“No.” He hands it to Foster. “It’s jammed.”
Foster wiggles it around, but it’s stuck.
“There’s four of us, one gun, going underneath a building where we don’t know how many are down there.” I say the words out loud, hoping to make my brain understand the danger.
Wes gives his to Barnes. “I’ll tackle anyone who comes near us, you’re a better shot than I am.”
Barnes runs a hand through his hair, knowing this is a stupid fucking way to do things. “Alright, it’s go time.”