Page 134 of Priest

I shifted slightly, my eyes narrowing. “We’ve got company.”

Archangel followed my line of sight and gave the barest nod. “Told you we weren’t running this one solo.”

He said it without pride, just clarity, but something in me eased anyway. Up until this point, Fallen Angels had been a question mark we’d tolerated because they hadn’t forced themselves into being anything else. Dangerous or disciplined, dirty or useful, I hadn’t known. Now, crouched beside their president while federal operators took up positions in the distance, I understood something I should have grasped earlier. They didn’t move like a club built on ego. They moved like men who had done this before and intended to leave fewer bodies behind because of it.

Archangel touched two fingers to his earpiece. “Positions confirmed?”

A chorus of low acknowledgments came back through the channel. South side secure. West loading dock covered. Federal team in place. Fallen Angels ready on the north entry. Saints spread east and south, the men under my patch waiting for my word.

I should have been listening for the details of the approach, for route points and entry order and timing, but my mind kept circling the same thing.

Instead I was counting floors and wondering where inside that building Blue was trying not to panic, whether she was hurt, whether she still believed I was coming.

A burst of static crackled over the comms, then one of Archangel’s men spoke, his voice tighter than before. “Upper level movement just increased. One armed male just crossed near a rear office. Another figure inside. Hard to tell.”

Another voice, this one from the federal side, came in a heartbeat later. “Possible activity near the holding floor. We’re hearing kids.”

My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.

Archangel lowered his voice without lowering the tension in it. “We breach on my count. Quiet first. Fast. Nobody goes cowboy.”

I nodded because it was the correct response, but there was already too much blood in my ears and too much fury under my skin. Blue wasn’t an abstraction in there. She wasn’t collateral. She wasn’t “another figure.” She was mine, and that thought had gone past possessive and into primal somewhere on the drive out.

The next sound came through the comms, not the air around us. Static. Breathing. Then a voice, controlled but sharpened by urgency. “Gunshot inside. We’ve got a scream right after it. Can’t confirm location.”

Something in me gave way.

Archangel swore behind me, already knowing from the way I moved that the plan was over.

Gravel kicked under my boots as I broke from cover and crossed the lot in a dead run. Behind me I heard the rush of bodies following, a sharp bark through the comms to move, the first crack of return gunfire as the perimeter gave itself away. It didn’t matter. Quiet was over. Whatever had happened inside that building had ended the luxury of patience.

The south entry gave under the weight of a battering ram and hard shoulders, metal shrieking as it tore inward. I went through with the first wave, the air inside stale and sour and thick with fear. The lower level opened wider than I expected—an industrial floor broken into sections by cages, chain link partitions, stacked crates, and makeshift corridors. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, some flickering, some burnt out entirely, turning the whole place into a patchwork of shadow and harsh white glare.

The first thing I saw wasn’t one of Joker’s men.

It was a woman gripping the wire of a cage so hard her knuckles had gone bloodless, her face too thin, one child wrapped around her leg and another pressed against her hip like they were trying to disappear back into her body. Around her, more women. More children. Hollow-eyed. Bruised. Terrified. Their cries rose the instant our men came through the doors, but they weren’t the panicked screams of an ambush anymore. They were desperate, disbelieving pleas from people who had learned too well not to trust rescue until the cage actually opened.

One of Joker’s men came out from behind a crate with his gun up. Ink put him down before the bastard got a second shot off. Another ran for a side hall and was tackled hard by one of the feds. Everywhere I looked the room was splintering into controlled violence and frantic mercy. Fallen Angels moved with brutal precision, clearing corners and doors while federal agents secured the living and secured the ones who survived the first exchange. Saints spread through the floor in a pattern that wasn’t neat but was ours, men under my patch moving toward threat and toward cages with the same instinctive priority.

Archangel caught my arm as I reached the base of a stairwell leading up. “Priest.”

I looked at him.

He saw it. The fact that my focus was narrowing to one thing, one room, one face.

“Don’t get stupid now,” he said. “You miss something because you’re blind with panic, she pays for it.”

I wanted to fight him for saying it. Instead I yanked free and kept moving, because buried inside the fury was the ugly truth that he was right. I couldn’t afford mistakes. Not now.

So I made myself look.

Door to the left—empty office. Door to the right—storage. Two men dragging another cage key ring toward the federal team. Rook kicking a lock in. Nomad shouting for med kits. One small girl screaming for her mother while a Fallen Angel cut her free from the chain link and carried her out.

No Blue.

I hit the stairs at a run, my voice ripping out of me before I could stop it. “Blue!”

No answer came back. Only more gunfire, closer to the rear of the building now, and the pounding of boots somewhere above.