CHAPTER 3 — THE DOOR BENEATH BLACKRIDGE
The hidden steel door opened with a sound like a monster waking up.
Every inmate in the yard froze.
Marcus tried to order the guards to drag Ava away, but no one moved. The dogs stood around her like soldiers guarding a queen.
Ava stepped toward the underground entrance.
One guard shouted, “Prisoners aren’t allowed down there!”
Ava turned slowly.
“Then why is my name on the file inside?”
The guard went pale.
Below the prison, Ava found a secret laboratory covered in dust, old cages, and military documents stamped CLASSIFIED.
Then she saw the wall.
Photographs of missing inmates.
Hundreds of them.
Marcus had not just been running Blackridge.
He had been selling prisoners for illegal experiments.
Ava’s mother had discovered the truth twenty years ago… and was murdered before she could expose it.
Ava was not a criminal.
She was an undercover federal investigator.
And the dogs had recognized the same whistle her mother used before she died.
Suddenly, Marcus appeared behind her with a gun.
“You should have stayed dead like your mother.”
Ava didn’t flinch.
From the shadows, dozens of inmates stepped forward.
May you like
Then the dogs began to growl.
For the first time, Marcus Kane had nowhere left to run.
