Chapter 11- Hit Me With Your Best Shot

"If you tell us where it is, we can end this," goon #1 said in a sickly sweet voice. He tried to come across as caring, but Leah could see through it.

As if her bruised and bleeding face wasn't enough evidence that this asshole didn't care about her well being.

And there was the whole thing about them killing her once she told them what they wanted to know.

So no, she wasn't here for this.

"I'd rather have period shits for a week straight. Hashtag blow me," she managed to say despite the ridiculous amount of pain her jaw felt.

Her trio of attackers had withheld the shock treatment until they decided they had punched her face enough. The first time they shocked her, she pissed herself.

Torture was not pretty.

Before today, Leah could say she was ambivalent to torture. After all, only terrorists get tortured, right?

Wrong.

Producing a wooden stick, Chris headed towards Leah. She gritted her teeth and pulled tense, terrified of where he was going to hit her.

How long had she been here? An hour? Two? Thirty minutes? Leah had passed out twice from pain so she had no idea how much time had passed.

Chris extended his arm as he neared her and struck her left leg below the knee. She bit back a yell. He hadn't hit her as hard as she knew he could hit. He drew his arm back and hit her left leg again. Leah growled in pain.

The third time, he hit her pretty damn hard, making Leah finally scream out.

"You're a shit stain on humanity," she said angrily, her entire body tense with pain.

"And you help facilitate that stain, don't you?" he asked, leaning in, mocking her. "You're worse than me."

Leah laughed, but her laugh turned to a groan as pain rippled through her body. "I'm better than you, in more ways than one, dick cheese."

Chris came within a foot of Leah's face, a smug grin on his face. "You kill people for a living. How is that any better than me?"

"Because I only kill assholes. So you better watch out!" she replied before headbutting Chris.

The goon's nose broke, spraying blood on his face and a little on hers. Leah leaned back, cringing. Chris staggered back, clutching at his now bleeding face, groaning loudly.

"You bitch!"

"That's right! And don't forget it!"

Chris dropped his hands to look at the blood. After a moment, he reached down to pick up a metal pipe. Leah gritted her teeth again, preparing herself for the pain that was about to come.

Turns out, being hit in the stomach with a metal pipe is far worse than being hit in the leg with a wooden stick.

Leah's piercing scream filled the half empty warehouse.

It had been two hours and fourteen minutes. With every passing minute, Cabe grew less certain that his group of geniuses would be able to find Leah.

He wondered what was being done to Leah. Had she already talked? Was she still alive? He knew his blood pressure was too high. His heart hurt, in more ways than one.

What kind of hold did this woman have on him?

Cabe had been on a couple of dates since the disaster speed dating night he had with Toby and Walter a few months past. It was hard to meet women given his job and his age. It was harder to meet the right kind of woman.

Yes, Leah was, apparently, a hitwoman. But he couldn't help but be drawn to her. She was beautiful, yes, but smart. She also had a moral code. That counted for something. Cabe had worked in the government long enough to know that things were not just black or white. Sometimes, things were murky.

Cabe was in the café on the first floor of the hotel, drinking coffee and trying not to worry too much. It wasn't really working.

"Cabe?" Paige said, walking up to his table.

He smiled at her. "Sit, please."

She sat across from him, smiling sadly.

"I know, I know," he said, beating her to it. "I'm too involved."

"I understand, I think, why you care so much. But she was sent here to kill you, Cabe. That's a big deal," she said quietly. She reached out to take one of his hands in hers. "Saving her is one thing, Cabe, but be careful. That's all."

Cabe squeezed her hand back. "Thank you, Paige. One step at a time, right? Right now, we need to find her. Her time is running out. The longer she's there, the worse off she's going to be and there's a chance we won't be able to save her. I need to talk to this guy, Phil, but the Doc's won't let me in. Says he's still not stable."

"Walt was able to track them pretty far on cameras. That's got to narrow it down, right? They weren't planning on torturing her, so it wasn't like they set something up."

"Right. It's last minute, gotta be somewhere close by. Let's get a map," Cabe said as he climbed to his feet, letting Paige's hand go.

She smiled up at him knowingly. "Let's."

They headed back up to the hotel room where Walter and Sly were still working. Cabe barged into the room, impatient already.

"Pull up a map starting from the last known position of the getaway car," Cabe ordered.

Walter gave him a slightly confused look, but saw Paige's smile behind Cabe and simply did as he was told. "Here," he said, turning the laptop slightly.

Cabe and Paige gathered behind the young man once again. "Okay. We figure they can't have been going too far. Best guess is they took her to a warehouse. It gives them space so no neighbors will hear her scream," Cabe said.

"Okay. We expand the map and in the general area they were going, there's this area past downtown," Walter said, expanding the map. "There's probably twenty warehouses available."

"They probably won't be in one owned by a company, unless it's a front for the Irish," Happy pointed out.

"Leah made it seem like these guys were new. They probably aren't getting that kind of help yet," Cabe said.

"With those parameters, we're still left with eleven warehouses."

"Take out any right next to the other nine," Cabe said. "They'd be too close so if someone heard her scream, they'd get caught."

"That narrows it down to four," Walter said. "Still a lot of ground to cover."

"Not if we use a thermal imager," Sylvester suggested. "We drive by the warehouses we suspect and see who's in there. If there's someone strapped to a chair, it's probably the right place."

"Good going, Sly. Now let's go!" Cabe said, finally filled with hope. It was time to find Leah and end this.