Page 135 of Rattle the Cage

“The fuck is that?” My brows furrowed as I knelt down, sticking my finger under the bend and pulling.

A loud pop resounded through the lab as the metal sheet ripped off the cabinet.

“Shit.” I fell back for a second, gripping the cabinet to steady myself as my eyes widened.

“Oh my god…” Reaching in, I grabbed the plastic-wrapped bricks and held them up. “Lookie here, Freaks.”

Everyone turned to look, rushing over to see what I’d found.

Blade hurdled the lab tables and slid across the bare surface of one. “No. Fucking. Way.”

Peering inside, they saw my discovery. Stacks and stacks of bricks.

“Excess product. Lots of it.” I laughed.

Temple tensed, Cyrus stared down at it. “Definitely more than the government would allow through the border for testing.” Reaching down, she grabbed a wrapped package of unrefined bark. Strips of brown wood inside that could be distilled down to the powdered crystals of the finished product.

They weren’t just refining more, they were smuggling it in somehow.

Some of the bricks were labeled with the simple black circle and lines that I’d seen on Jeremy’s DMT bag… along with an address.

It was Tess who recognized it. “That’s the compound.”

“She’s right.” Blade nodded, grabbing the labeled brick and shoving it into her pants.

That was all the confirmation we needed. This lab was refining DMT and sending it to Rubin’s compound. The one place in Valemont we couldn’t get access to was the exact source of the drugs that were poisoning Valemont’s citizens.

Cyrus’s head whipped up to the analog clock over the door. “Shit. We gotta go. Now.”

A whistle came from down the hallway, the security guard doing his patrol just on time.

Moving quickly, we pocketed whatever evidence we could. We needed everything we could manage.

The good news was, since the lab was breaking protocol, it would be hard for them to track us down. They’d have to admit to trafficking extra drugs for them to admit anything had been stolen.

The guard was too close to run out of the building.

Tess’s voice had turned to a panicked whisper. “How the fuck are we getting out of here?”

Reaching into her back pocket, Blade pulled out a long cord of rope. “Don’t worry, Trinket. I’m good with knots.”

Blade found a bolted down lab table by the window, bent down and tied a quick, sturdy knot around it before tossing the rope out the fourth floor window.

I moved first, wanting to make sure the rope was steady enough before we sent our precious Sweet Lamb down. I was big enough that if it could handle me, anyone could follow.

As I grabbed the rough rope and hooked my body around the side of the glass building, I watched Cyrus pull a gun from the back of her pants. “Go quick.” She yelled to Tess before I was even fully out the window.

I planted my feet against the glass and walked myself down the side of the building, letting the rope burn in my hands as I slid down.

“Eyes up, Sweet Lamb. Don’t look down.” I called up to her as I saw her body coming down above me.

All she could do was nod.

By the time I reached the ground, taking a deep breath as a rush of relief washed over me, Tess was just a few feet behind me and Cyrus not far behind her.

Blade was the last to leave the lab, standing in the windowsill. Grabbing the rope, she laughed as she leapt off the side of the building, the rope racing through her palm as she flew down to the base.

Wincing, I knew her hands would be torn up from the rope burn.