Chapter 102 The Hunt begins
Third person Pov.
The road was empty. Which wasn’t much of a surprise because this part of town was blocked off from the rest of the world.
Gavin and Kane sat in the black Mercedes, parked at the end of a narrow road that cut through an industrial stretch of the city. There are no streetlights here. The nearest one had been broken for months. The only light came from the dashboard, a faint green glow that barely lightened their faces.
Kane sat in the passenger seat, his legs were slightly apart, one hand rested on his thigh. He was watching the road ahead through the windshield with the kind of patience that came from years of waiting in the dark. A hunter’s patience.
Minutes passed and neither of them spoke.
Kane was the first to break the silence.
“You don’t have to be here, you know that, right?” His voice was low, barely above a murmur. He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “You could let me and the men handle it. You could be home right now.”
Gavin didn’t answer immediately. He let the question sit, the way he let most things sit, turning it over before giving it weight.
Then he turned his head and looked at Kane.
Kane felt the gaze and shifted his eyes toward him. In the dim green light of the dashboard, his face looked carved from stone. A sharp jaw, eyes that were as deadly as it was beautiful , he had the kind of face that made people instinctively lower their voices.
“I know how much you hate war,” Kane said quietly. “The chaos that comes with it. The mess. You’ve always hated the mess.”
He was right. Gavin had. For twenty years, he’d built a life specifically designed to stay as far from that mess as possible.
All of it carefully built to keep the darkness at bay.
“I do,” Gavin said. His voice was calm. “I hate it.”
Kane nodded, not surprised.
Then he looked at Gavin again, with a soft smile on his face.
“You really do love her, don’t you?”
Kane had known Gavin for twenty-two years. He’d seen him at his worst…bleeding out in a warehouse in Lagos, half-dead from a knife wound in São Paulo, staring at the ceiling of a hospital in Hong Kong after a bullet had missed his heart by less than an inch.
He’d never once seen him afraid.
Until Melissa.
Gavin didn’t say anything for a moment. He just let the truth of it settle around him, heavy and warm and terrifying all at once. Then he nodded.
“I do.”
Kane held his gaze for a second longer, then looked back at the road. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Then he shifted, rubbing his lower lip with his thumb the way he always did when something was turning over in his mind.
“And what about Aria?”
Gavin turned to look at him.
Kane was not a man who let people in. Never had been. He moved through the world like smoke…present one moment, gone the next, leaving nothing behind but the faint impression that he’d been there at all. Women had come and gone. Connections had been made and severed.
But lately, something has changed.
The way he talked about Aria. The way his voice shifted when her name came up, just slightly, just enough for someone who’d known him as long as Gavin had to notice. The way he’d started checking his phone a little more often, glancing at the screen with an expression that didn’t quite fit the rest of his face.
“I’ve never seen you claim anyone before,” Gavin said, and a small smile crossed his face.
Kane’s thumb stilled on his lip. He let out a breath through his nose, something between a laugh and a sigh.
“I seem to have surprised myself as well,” he said quietly. “But the girl’s family…” He rubbed his lower lip again, his jaw tightening. “They’ve dug themselves into something they didn’t understand. Something deep.”
“I know,” Gavin said.
“They don’t even see it.”
“They won’t. Until it’s too late.”
Kane nodded once. That was all the agreement either of them needed.
They fell back into silence.
——-
Twelve minutes passed before they heard the sound of the cars. True to the intel Kane got. Meaning they were right on time.
Their eyes locked for just a moment. Kane’s head tilted, just a bit. A nod so small it could have been a muscle twitch. Gavin returned it. And then they moved.
The car doors opened and closed with barely a sound, they split without even needing to say anything. Kane went left, slipping along the wall of a corrugated steel warehouse. Gavin went right, staying low, while keeping in the shadows.
He blocked his nose, the moment the smell hit him. It stopped him cold.
The strong smell of piss and decay. The sour, unmistakable stench of bodies left unwashed for days, weeks maybe. The worst smile was that of the bleach. It was obvious they were trying to mask the smell using it.
Gavin breathed through his mouth and kept moving.
Through a gap in the warehouse wall…a rusted panel pulled back just enough to slip through…he could see inside.
It was filled with very young girls. Some of them barely more than children, huddled against the concrete floor in groups of two or three, their clothes were torn and filthy, their eyes vacant and glassy in a way that made Gavin's heart tighten. Some of them were staring at nothing, rocking slightly, their lips moving without making a sound.
The smell was coming from them.
He’d seen warehouses like this before. In places, he’d buried so deep in his memory he’d thought they were gone forever.
There were eleven girls in total, and three exits. Four guards spread around the perimeter. They were armed but they looked relaxed. They obviously didn’t expect any trouble.
He pressed two fingers against the comm unit in his ear. Two taps back, and Kane was in position.
Gavin pulled the Glock from his holster. He breathed in once, then out.
They entered at the same time.
Gavin came through the gap in the rusted panel. Kane came through the entrance on the far side… they didn’t need to rush.
The first guard saw Gavin before he’d taken three steps. The man’s mouth opened…a shout forming on his lips.
The second guard turned. Before he could move, Gavin had already shot him in the chest. The third guard reached for his weapon.
A single shot rang out. Kane shot him quickly and his eyes were already looking for his next target..
The fourth guard didn’t move. He just stood there, his face drained of color, staring at the two men who had appeared from nowhere and dismantled his crew in less than four seconds.
The warehouse fell silent.
Even the girls stopped moving.
Gavin kept walking. Each footstep echoed against the concrete like a countdown. The Glock stayed level, aimed at the fourth guard’s chest, but his eyes moved…sweeping the room, missing nothing.
Kane moved to the wounded guard and pressed him against the wall with one hand, with no effort at all, like holding a child in place.
Gavin stopped walking.
He stood in the center of the warehouse, the concrete floors were stained with things he didn’t need to identify, the smell was thick and heavy in the surrounding air. Eleven girls watched him from the floor. Some of them flinched. Some of them didn’t have the energy to.
He looked down at them. Then he looked back up at the fourth guard.
The man’s legs were shaking.
Gavin tilted his head slightly. The way a wolf does when it’s deciding whether the thing in front of it is worth the effort.
“Evening, gentlemen,” he said.