I still didn’t respond. I had been saved often enough by men that I was a little less feminist than when I first started this sojourn after running my Zombiefied boyfriend over for cheating on me. But I wasn’t submissive enough to believe I would or could become a man’s property. My thoughts were free, my actions were defiant and my life plan did not involve twenty-one children and a husband that kept Zombie pets starved and tortured in his hallway.
That was just not going to happen.
Kane’s eyebrows snapped together when I still didn’t respond and he impatiently demanded, “Just tell me that you at least understand what could happen to you. At least make me feel somewhat confident about taking you in there.”
If my hands were free, this was the part where I would have clenched them into fists so I could punch him in his face.
And then in the balls.
“Why should you feel confident when I can’t even feel my fingers anymore?”
He spun around and yanked open the door. His broad shoulders were rigid again and his face a mask of serious energy. He held the door open for me and gestured that I walk into an old classroom that had been turned into a kind of courtroom…. or throne room. It was confusing.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he mumbled in a sing song voice that was meant to taunt me.
I stifled the urge to roll my eyes and walked into the center of the room. A man and wife sat in rolling, leather desk chairs in front of a long white board- the front of the classroom. But this wasn’t just any classroom- this was a tiered band room.
If I had to guess, I would assume that this was the largest of classrooms and placed near the back of the school. There were stackable cushioned chairs that lined up in rows of spectators as the tiers climbed higher. A teacher’s metal desk sat just inside the door with a man sitting behind it. He seemed like a clerk of some kind and as soon as Kane followed me inside he went over to talk to the man behind the desk.
Most of the chairs were full and seated mostly with men. They stared down at me like they were sharks and I was fresh chum and they had been swimming for days and hadn’t tasted so much of a nibble of something delicious. They were clean for the most part and decently shaved- unless it was obvious they were opting for the mountain-man look. Their clothes were in good condition and their skin tanned and healthy.
The man and woman at the front of the room were no exception. Even the woman’s hair seemed well-tamed and styled with some kind of product.
Other than the leering men, no one else offered a kind expression or friendly smile.
They seemed to hate me on sight.
Or be making silent wagers on what I tasted like with a little bit of Lowry’s.
“Kane? Who is this?” the man in the head spot asked. His accent was thick, but his words were carefully pronounced. He had the same thick mess of black hair that Kane did and angular cheek bones set off with a broken noise.
“More wanderers in the woods,” Kane shrugged casually and looked around the room bored and unimpressed. “We found them close to the edge of the forest.”
“Any connection to last night?” his father pressed.
“Yes,” Kane answered simply.
Kane’s father looked me over from top to bottom, scrutinizing every aspect of me in all my hands tied behind my back glory. His brows rose just barely in surprise and a small smile tugged at his lips.
Finally, he released me from his study and shouted at a guy in the back of the room, “Samson, go get Miller.”
Samson was a fifty-something man with salt and pepper hair and overalls. He scurried down the wide tiers and then disappeared down a hallway to the left of Kane’s dad- practice rooms.
“Make introductions, son,” he ordered and then nodded in the direction of the woman to his right.
Kane looked over at me and admitted, “We came straight here. I don’t even know her name.”
“Think she’ll be as difficult as those boys last night?” his dad laughed good-humoredly, but I had a feeling that did not bode well for Hendrix and Nelson.
“She’ll tell us,” Kane assured him. “She just got done telling me that she’s not our enemy. If she’s not an enemy, then she’s our friend. And a friend wouldn’t withhold a simple detail like that.”
Tricky bastard.
But if Vaughan’s theory was right, then this was an easy question to be honest about.
“Reagan,” I confessed with a steady voice. “My name is Reagan Willow.”
There were a few moments of silence where my name just hung in the air, stationary. Finally the entire room seemed to digest it before Kane continued.
“Reagan,” he tested my name out on his lips and I wanted to take it back immediately, to hide it it… bury it. “This is my father, Matthias Allen and my mother, Linley.”