“Oh, no. That would be too easy. I’m sending you somewhere. And you’ll never come back.”
I looked around. If she left me alone, I’d work my way back to IQC. I had a good sense of direction and it wasn’t as if I could get lost. There was nothing to hide the rocky terrain, the snow. Yeah, it all looked the same and our footprints were most likely being blown away.
“Leaving me behind a rock isn’t going to work.”
She laughed then. “Leave you behind a rock? Gods, I thought you were really smart. I even liked you. Don’t blow it now.”
I glanced over my shoulder then, squinted. Her cheeks were red, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. And, yup, she had that ion thingy pointed at me. So much for all the helpful girly BFF chatting we’d done. While she’d been helping me pick out clothes, she’d been mentally backstabbing me. She must have been laughing that I knew nothing of her and Rager, but also jealous that he was fucking me, too.
I told her as much.
“Rager’s mine,” she growled. “Just knowing his cock had been in you, that his mouth has been on your pussy. Gods, that his hands touched you everywhere, makes me want to hurt you. He was supposed to be mine.”
I spun about. She stopped in her tracks and I stared at her. Her face was lit by the sun and the snow. Her cheeks were red, her eyes wild, her hair blowing sideways away from her face.
“Supposed to be? Thalia, you were buck naked in the shower with him.”
She grinned then. Not because we were friends, but because I was her enemy. “So you saw us, did you?” Then her smile fell away and a narrow gazed hatred took its place. “You saw him reject me. Tell me you were the only one he wanted.”
I didn’t see the hit coming. I’d been too stunned by her words to block the blow to the side of my head. I stumbled, fell to my knees.
“Fuck,” I groaned. I’d been in fights before, cat fights really, with other women. Stupid drunken bar shit. But this? This wasn’t the same thing. She was armed and she was pissed and she’d just cold-cocked me in the side of my head with her pistol.
My entire head exploded with pain and my vision blurred. I tasted blood in my mouth and I was pretty sure my jaw was broken. And through it all I felt suddenly warm.
Rager had turned her away? They’d both been naked. She’d told him to give her his cock. But I’d run out. Missed the last. She wouldn’t lie about Rager rejecting her. She had no reason to lie now. Not out here. If he’d fucked her, as I’d thought, she’d be gloating. Preening.
“Get up.” She kicked me in the ribs with her boot and a sharp, stabbing pain had me crying out as I felt one of my ribs crack with a crunching sensation. “Keep moving.”
She kicked me again and I grunted, but stood, holding one hand to my head. It pulsed and throbbed, but I ignored it as I began to tingle all over. Thank god for endorphins, or whatever this was, as my pain faded to a dull roar. Knowing Rager hadn’t fucked her made me feel…better. But I was still confused. If he rejected her, why would he be helping her?
We walked another few minutes and she ordered me to stop moving. We were in the middle of nowhere, like North Pole nowhere. I couldn’t run; there was no place to hide or avoid being shot. We were in the middle of a large flat area, the snow hard and flat in an unbroken plain beneath our feet. Looking out from here, it appeared to go on for miles and miles. An ocean of white.
I glanced over my shoulder when she stopped. She looked at her wrist communicator and slung a bag off her back, let it drop to the hard-packed snow. I hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying it. Of course, a big old space gun provided plenty of distraction. With a push of her boot to the back of my knee, she forced me to my knees.
I remained silent as I watched her set up some weird poles, metal bars, in a square around me. She placed her weapon on the ground beside her as she worked, but she was too far away for me to have any hope of taking it from her. It looked like she was putting up the corners of a tent…or a cage. I glanced around, shielded my eyes with my hands. I couldn’t see the IQC anymore. I couldn’t see anything but snow and dark, ragged rock. And machines, some kind of snow vehicle was moving toward us.
As I watched, I saw someone jump down from the vehicle and my heart thumped against my broken ribs. Hard. My heart pounded with hope as I watched them approach. I was being rescued. Thank god.
I shivered then. Adrenaline was making me feel weird. The sweat had stopped and now I was cold. So cold. I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet. I tried to smile, but my lips didn’t want to work. I thought that I should get up and run toward them, zig-zag around and let Thalia take her best shot. But the idea was like fog in my mind and my body refused to move.