Page 26 of PSYCHOlogical

I peered through the door’s opening. A man I quickly identified as Ortiz was frantically fumbling in the dark, hoping to find spare magazines for his weapon. His shirt was soaked in blood.

I fired two shots, eliminating Ortiz and the other occupant of the room.

The second bedroom had remained quiet during our not-so-silent raid of the residence. Unpainted repairs to the sheetrock walls gave indication that the room’s steel door and frame had recently been installed.

There were two reasons to have an iron-framed steel door in such a residence. To secure what was inside the room from leaving, or to deter who was outside the room from entering.

I raised my clenched fist, directing the men not to breach the door.

I attempted—unsuccessfully—to turn the door handle. A quick inspection revealed a keyed door lock, meaning the door had been locked—with a key—from the outside. Whoever was on the other side of the door was secured inside the room.

Despite the fact I’d been in similar situations no less than a few hundred times, I had yet to get past the nervous feeling that filled me when I was uncertain of what was on the other side of a door.

Pike gestured toward the door with the barrel of his weapon.

I shook my head. Firing his 9mm submachinegun at the steel door would put all of us at risk of ricochet. I released my weapon and allowed it to hang from my shoulder by the sling. Using my hands, I made the gesture of pumping a shotgun to CW.

While CW retrieved the breach shotgun, Pike anxiously rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Breaching a steel door with a boot would be close to impossible, depending on how securely it was installed. Blasting it with explosives would alert every neighbor within a half-mile radius.

Blowing the handle off with the specially designed shotgun would be loud, but it wouldn’t put our lives at risk. Fifteen seconds after the handle was blown, we’d be out the back door, and on our way back to Phoenix.

After a silent moment passed, CW returned. He pressed the tip of the barrel against the door’s locking mechanism, turned his head to the side, and pulled the trigger. Simultaneously, I kicked the door.

The heavy door swung open, slamming into the opposite wall with a floor-shaking thud! A putrid stench hit me like a gut-punch, causing me to suck an unwanted breath.

“Hold your fire,” I coughed out.

In the far corner of the empty room, a young woman was sitting on the floor, shaking.

Although we could see her through our night vision, the complete darkness left her blind to where we were or what we looked like. The green glow of her silhouette cowered in the corner, waiting to meet her fate. Thin, naked, and underdeveloped, she looked to be no more than twelve or thirteen years old.

“Habla bien ingles?” I asked.

With a filthy hand, she swiped her matted hair away from her face. “Huh?”

“Do you speak English?”

She nodded toward my voice. “I uhhm. Yeah,” she said, the words getting caught in her throat as she spoke. “Please…don’t…I’ll do whatever you want…”

“What’s your name?”

“Amber,” she responded. “Amber Kilgore.”

I cleared my throat. “Are you hurt, Amber?”

It was a ridiculous question, really. I could only imagine what she had been through, none of which did anything but harm her emotionally and psychologically.

“No,” she whispered.

It was people like her that drew me to the profession I was in. Preventing her and those like her from being harmed by the Nation’s predators was my driving force.

Without approaching, I looked her over. One of her wiry forearms covered her chest. The other hand was cupped between her legs. Her pale skin was spotted with dark bruises. Dried blood covered one cheek. Matted hair hung from her head like strands of dirty yarn.

There was no denying she’d been through hell and lived to tell about it.

Taking her with us wasn’t an option. So far, we hadn’t risked our identities. I couldn’t give her an opportunity to identify what we were driving, our facial features, our gear, or our manner of dress.