The door creaked open. Wolfe wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t a modern office with a dusty but otherwise pristine tile floor and two reception desks—although there were a ton of footprints leading to a door in the back of the office. The outside had felt a bit more… thuggish, Wolfe supposed.

There was a computer on one of the desks.

Shel walked to the computer and flipped it on. but after a few seconds of banging at the keys, shook her head. “I tried the most common passwords, but none worked, so we’re on our own.”

“Always are,” Wolfe said.

He walked across the floor and opened the door. It led into a hall with a few more doors into respectable offices, although again covered in dust. But the path that had been cleared of the most dust went forward, hit a four-way intersection, and then curved left, away from the center of the factory and back toward the outside wall.

Wolfe followed the footprints slowly till he reached a door that just said ‘stairwell.’

He opened it into a dimly lit, unadorned concrete stairwell heading down. “This is more of the vibe I was expecting. A sort of modern homage to thugs and horror movies.”

Shel giggled nervously.

Wolfe took the steps down till he reached the basement, then exited into an equally dimly lit hallway with concrete floors heading right and left. Wolfe could vaguely make out both connecting hallways and doors.

A lot of them.

“I wouldn’t normally advocate splitting the party, as the kids say, but we’re on a time limit here. You okay to search for your sister right while I take left?”

Shel nodded, her pupils slightly dilated but her jaw firmly set.

Wolfe held his knife out. “Alright. Take this. Try not to shoot someone or pull your deck if you can help it, although obviously your safety is what’s most important. But either action will put the whole place on alert.”

Shel took the knife, nodded once, and headed away from him down the hall.

Wolfe pulled his gun—he wasn’t sure what he would run into, and as he had told Shel, he’d really rather not fire it. That said, he wasn’t dumb enough to walk through Damian’s lair unarmed.

He took a couple hallways, peeked inside the mostly open doors, and passed by more hallways. The place was a maze. Wolfe turned a third corner in the same hallway.

A sudden loud bang—metal on metal, not a gunshot—echoed through the building. Adrenaline dumped into Wolfe’s system, and he held his breath and tried to convince his heart to climb back out of his throat.

The bang didn’t repeat, but the sound of men laughing replaced it.

“Another, another!” someone yelled.

A doorway ahead of Wolfe erupted with cheering. Wolfe wasn’t sure if they were playing a game, or what, but he was glad they were occupied.

The door opened, throwing light into the dim hallway. Wolfe quickly stepped back around the corner of the four-way intersection, keeping one eye out.

A man staggered out of the door. “Just play without me. I’m gonna go check the merchandise, see if they’re almost ready. Boss wants to move soon. Besides, I’m down too damn much money already.”

The thug was wearing a reinforced jacket and jeans, and he staggered in Wolfe’s direction. Wolfe leaned back, reversing his grip on the gun to use as an improvised club if needed.

But the thug turned the other way, walking within a few feet of Wolfe without seeing him.

Wolfe sent a half-meant prayer Cerberus’ way, then followed after the thug as quietly as possible. The man walked slow, his gait ungainly, staggering as he went, but Wolfe still gave him a fair amount of space.

The man never turned around, and never seemed to notice Wolfe. He walked down a side hall, then took a turn and went to another door.

He banged on the door. “Finish up! Boss called down, said they’ll be ready to move in thirty minutes, and we need the last two handled quick!”

Wolfe fell back again and hid around the corner of a different hall as the man stumbled back. He continued past Wolfe again, heading back toward whatever-the-Infernal game they had been playing.

Wolfe was half-tempted to end the trafficking asshole now, but restrained himself. It would only subject him to risk, not take out anyone that actually needed to die. ‘Drunk thug’ would be handled by the police or a different thug.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Instead, he turned and walked back to the room the thug had banged on. He would bet money that Lucy was there. There were three other doors in the same segment of hallway, and Wolfe could hear activity from some of them.

He would need to be quiet.

Wolfe opened the door, but the room he entered didn’t have anyone in it at first glance. It had a medical table heaped with something, some desks, a couple chairs, and too many bundles of medical equipment to count. Plus a computer haphazardly placed on the very edge of a counter and numerous IV bags on stands. A ton of those.

Also, a door in the back that was closed.

Wolfe realized the bundle on the medical table wasn’t bundles—it was a body, hooked up to the computer and an IV bag. Some dude, probably about eighteen, fully naked.

The computer screen was so old it was a solid square. There was a vitals display on it. The little blips kept going up and down, and weren’t a flat line, so Wolfe assumed the man was okay. Or at least not dead.

He was glad he didn’t have to take a pulse—he might be old fashioned, but he didn’t want to be touching a naked man.

There were a couple sheets of paper on a clipboard next to the man. Wolfe grabbed them—they might be evidence of something, and get Worldwide Decurion in trouble.

The door to the back opened as Wolfe was engaged in his examination. He grabbed the heavy computer screen off the counter and yanked the cord out, and then, as a man walked into the room, slammed the whole-ass monitor against the guy’s head.

The dude’s face exploded, teeth and blood flying, and he slammed back onto the ground with a mangled grunt. Someone inside let out a very girlish yell. The damage notification from Wolfe’s attack didn’t say anything about dead or knocked out, and so Wolfe stepped up and kicked the man in his head as hard as he could.

The man stopped moving. Permanently, according to the damage charts.

Fuck. Pretty sure I won’t get in trouble for this, but not sure how Shel will feel about it.

Wolfe pushed it aside. It was an issue for later. He stepped into the next room, which was very dimly lit.

“Get back!”

Wolfe stopped, surprised by the command. He lifted his gun, but then stopped, surprised by what he saw.

Thank you, Cerberus, or whichever god has my back.

Lucy and Shannon were in the back. Lucy stood farthest forward, a medical syringe held in her hand like a knife in a slasher movie. Lucy wore a white men’s t-shirt which was long enough to act as a dress and barely that, but nothing else at all—even her feet were bare on the concrete floor of the room. No shoes, no socks. She was glaring at Wolfe with a look a honey badger might give a lion that came for it—the lion might win, but it would be a whole thing.

Shannon, however, was huddled behind her, legs drawn up in front of her and her hair over her face, which in turn rested on her arms, which were crossed on her knees. She too only had a men’s t-shirt on.

“I said get back!” Lucy said, thrusting the syringe forward even though she was a good fifteen feet away, her finger on the plunger.

Does she not recognize me? Wolfe stepped into the light, lowering his weapon.

“Kid, keep quiet.”

For once Lucy didn’t object to improper naming. “Wolfe? Is that you? Really?”

“Shh.”

Wolfe walked over to Lucy. She fiddled with her long red hair, hesitating, then suddenly handed over the syringe. Wolfe put it in the front pocket of his hoodie, hoping he wouldn’t accidentally stab himself.

Then Lucy threw her arms around Wolfe, hugging him tight.

She’s never really liked me before. I guess everyone likes me when I use my one skill for their benefit. Hell, I don’t think she’s so much as shaken my hand before.

Wolfe couldn’t deny he was happy about it, though.

Wolfe still hurt a bit, from injury and lesser damage both, but he didn’t have the heart to push Lucy away.

Lucy finally let go and stepped back, her face more guarded and her eyes watering.

“Are you hurt?” Wolfe asked. Then he glanced over at Shannon. “Can you both walk?”

Wolfe wasn’t sure what to ask, or say. He would hunt whomever had hurt them, but he didn’t know how much they had been hurt, or what to do about it… and him killing bad people was a proscriptive measure—it prevented future harm; it didn’t fix the ones that had already been hurt.

Lucy grabbed Wolfe’s hoodie, her voice high and fast. “There were police officers. They got in their car. They took us here, all the way from Joliet. They wouldn’t talk to us. I thought we were in trouble.”

Lucy spoke quickly, taking short, sharp breaths between sentences. Wolfe was nervous, as they were very much on a timetable, but he didn’t want to stop her from getting it out. Just one minute more.

“They said we had to wait here,” Lucy continued. “And then other people came to see us. They had guns. They told us to take off our clothes. I told them no. Shannon did too. But they didn’t listen. They had guns. We didn’t want to. We told them no.”

“I understand.”

“We didn’t want to,” Lucy repeated, staring up at Wolfe with glassy eyes.

A whole lot of mother fuckers are going to die. “I believe you,” Wolfe said, trying to keep the rage from his voice.

“Shannon cried, and one man… he gave us shirts. A different man asked us questions. He had a needle. He took our blood.” Lucy was now speaking in a monotone voice, as if she was reporting facts, and not something that had happened to her.

Wolfe grit his teeth. At least one of the assholes had possessed a tiny shred of humanity. When a little girl had cried, he had handed over shirts.

When Big Man Grimm had been in charge, stuff like this had never happened. Deputy Chief Charleston might think all criminals were the same, but they really weren’t. Innocents had never suffered when Big Man Grimm was in charge, not like this. No children, no one that hadn’t voluntarily lived the life.

Wolfe knew the Grimm family had taken a huge dive when he found himself thanking some random, nameless thug for giving kids a shirt.

“They didn’t hurt you?” Wolfe asked.

Lucy held out her arm, showing Wolfe the inside of her elbow. “Just this. They didn’t do anything else.”

Thank the Divine.

Lucy continued. “They just left after taking blood. ‘Cept the one you hit.”

She peeked past him. “Is he okay?”

“Don’t worry about that. We need to get out of here.”

Wolfe stood. “Let’s go. Shel is here, and we need to leave. More bad men will come soon.”

Lucy turned and glanced at Shannon. “She’s not moving, or saying anything.”

Wolfe stared at the girl, who hadn’t so much as lifted her head from her crossed arms.

Shit.