The room the hatch had opened into was pitch-black. Unwilling to shine her flashlight into the space and possibly alert someone of her presence, Molly took a deep breath and descended the steps into darkness, silently closing the hatch behind her. Moving quickly and quietly, she reached the floor and blinked, trying to see shapes in the thick blackness, but there was nothing.

Knowing that she needed to see where she was going, she pulled out her small flashlight, pressing it against her hand to muffle most of the light. She looked around, her bones going watery with relief when she didn’t see anyone waiting to pounce. It looked like she was in a utility room, judging by the mechanical equipment and the dusty cleaning supplies piled up by the door.

Turning off her light, Molly crept toward the door, pressing her ear against it to listen. There was only silence, so she carefully turned the knob and opened it the tiniest bit. Putting her face to the crack, she peered into the space but didn’t see anything in her line of vision except some empty industrial shelves. The light was slightly brighter outside the room she was in, illuminating it enough that she could see shapes without her flashlight.

Taking a deep breath, she exhaled as she slipped out of the utility room. The hugeness of the open space made her feel like she was out in the open and vulnerable, so she stayed in the safety of shadows created by the oversize shelves. She moved through the space, stopping occasionally to listen for voices or to squint through the dimness, trying to see anything—movement or human-sized shapes—but she was alone with the shadows and the empty, dusty shelves.

She started wondering if she’d overreacted. Maybe John was back in Langston right now, laughing about the joke he’d played on her.

No. He wouldn’t have tried to scare her, not when they were both keyed up and watching for Sonny. Someone else had sent that text. Even though he loved to tease her, John wasn’t a jerk, and he cared about her too much to do something that dangerous and hurtful.

Molly cared about him, too—so much that the idea of losing him made her want to curl up into a pain-racked ball. There was no time for that, though. She needed to rescue her man.

Moving through the building with more purpose now, she started looking for a way to divide up the warehouse so she could search each section without missing any parts. As she passed a pillar, she looked to her right and paused. Was the light slightly brighter in that direction? She cautiously headed that way, taking greater care to stay silent and keep to the shadows.

A sound made her freeze, even before she recognized it as the smack of knuckles against flesh. A thousand images of how they could be torturing John, each one worse than the last, ran through her mind, but she firmly shut off that flow. If she wanted to function, she couldn’t think about that.