“Kash . . .”

“Don’t start with me, Mason. I need to move or I’m going to go crazy. I won’t go in there without you, I don’t have a death wish.”

Grabbing two handguns and holstering them, I took off in the dark and tried to keep calm as I made a wide perimeter around the building. I strained to hear anything coming from inside, but there was nothing. And, unfortunately, with the power being out, I couldn’t see the activity with lights or electronics I normally would watch out for.

The quiet and darkness continued to put doubt in my mind that anyone was there. That we would go in and it would be empty, just as the first house had been. But something was telling me Rachel was in there, and I couldn’t ignore that. I also could not get past this f**king stupid bad feeling. It hadn’t been there yesterday, it just randomly started this morning and had steadily gotten worse as the day had progressed.

As soon as I finished walking the perimeter, I turned and went around the other way, making a wider berth and weaving in and out of other buildings around. I looked for buildings that were abandoned, and when I finally found one, forced my way inside. It had the same setup as the one we were watching, a few doors of entry, but there was practically nothing inside.

I made my way past remains of a squatter camp and rodent nests, and walked straight to a random room standing in the middle of the massive space. As I got closer, I withdrew one of my guns and turned on the mounted-on flashlight. I kicked back the door that was barely hanging on its hinges and flashed the light down the steps. Taking a deep breath, I walked down and stopped when I hit another door. Mason is going to kill me when he finds out I cleared a building alone. Preparing for anything, and hoping for nothing, I grabbed the knob and shoved the door open.

“What the f**k?”

As soon as I was out of the building, I quickly made my way back to where Mason was sitting and dropped down on the ground next to him.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I found a building that’s set up the same as this one. There was nothing upstairs except for these four walls pretty close to the main door. At first I thought it was a room, but it just held stairs that led to a basement. Down there, there are no doors to get in or out, except for the stairs. This basement was as empty as the upstairs, but these guys live here, and it’s Juarez’s main house. So I know they had to have done a lot of construction inside. But I’m betting they have the housing downstairs.”

He looked over at me, and then back at the building. “Why?”

“Because the buildings around here are all abandoned or closed up because of the storm. So they’re dark anyway, but all the houses on the other side of these buildings? There are flashlights, candles . . . you can hear people talking. There’s nothing in there.”

“Maybe there’s nobody in there then,” he said softly.

“No, she’s in there, I’m just betting she’s downstairs. But we need to do this tonight, Mason, like, now. I’m not shitting you, I have a really bad feeling.”

He took in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then released it in one hard rush. “Okay, get ready and let’s go get her then.”

After putting on our bulletproof vests, we quietly opened up our “oh-shit” bags and took out zip ties, magazines, boxes of ammo, glow sticks, and extra cuffs. After loading extra magazines with ammo, we started putting everything on us, and looked at each other.

“You ready?” he asked.

“You have no idea.”

“Let’s do this.” He put his fist out, and just as I went to slam mine down on it, my cell phone began vibrating in my pocket. “Is yours ringing?”

I nodded. “Yours too?”

“Yes, shit.” He grabbed his phone and I reached for mine. We both stepped away from each other and the building, and answered as quietly as we could.

“Ryan.”

“Hey, Ryan, it’s Detective Browning in Homicide.”

My heart skipped painful beats as I waited for him to continue. Not now, she couldn’t be dead when we were so close.

“We had a shooting outside an underage nightclub. One dead, three en route to the hospital in critical condition. From what the witnesses that were on scene are saying, gangs were involved, and it all started after people had been yelling about their territories. But everyone we’ve talked to so far doesn’t know who the shooters were, doesn’t know what gangs they’re in, and doesn’t know what the shootout was for exactly. You know, the usual. We need you to come over here, and help us sort through some things if you could.”

No. No, I can’t.

“Ryan? You still there?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Can you meet us in homicide, we have the witnesses over there.”

I gritted my teeth and was suddenly spun around by Mason. “Tell him you’ll be there.” I shook my head and Mason gripped my shoulder roughly in his hand. “Tell him you’ll be there.”

Hanging my head, I choked out, “Yeah, on my way.”

After hitting the END button, I looked up at Mason and tried to calm myself so I wouldn’t react against him.

“This is our job, someone just died, and three are in critical. We have to go help them.”

“But, Rachel—”

“Will still be there later. I know this is hard, Kash. After all this time, I know it’s hard. But we need to do our job.”