We waited.
And waited.
Cold sweat soaked my T-shirt. Millions of images ran through my head as if it’d be the last day of my life. I didn’t want to die. If I made it out of here, what would I do differently? I promised myself I’d stop and think. I wouldn’t trust anyone I didn’t know. While reflecting, I wished for a few things too. I wished I was back at my community, trying to fix my Kickster when Vice had walked in. I wished I broke down into tears like every other girl about to be sold and taken away from the only home she’d ever known. If I weren’t so eager for a better life, the woman in the white coat wouldn’t have come. I would have drunk the crap tea. Vice and I would have lived happily ever after.
I wished I was different, not so outspoken, not so…me.
“You’re quiet,” Rey whispered. “It’s not like they don’t know we’re here.”
“Do me a favor. Tell Vice I don’t hate him. I never really hated him.”
Rey paled again. “You think they’ll get us.” I didn’t respond, so she continued. “Don’t break down on me. You jump from buildings. If you can do that, you can do anything. Right?”
“Right. Right, okay. I fear nothing.” I bounced on my toes. “I’m not gonna break down. I will chop him up. Like this.” I swung my ax a couple of times.
Rey smiled. “Like that?”
“Yeah, like that. Then we’re gonna fill your fridge,” I joked. “For the guys, you know.”
Rey swallowed. “Or not?”
“Or not.”
The house shook, and we screamed.
A man burst through the window. In a split second, he’d crossed the room and stood at the closet door. He was covered in dirt. I could barely see his face. Then I recognized the pale red in his eyes. I opened my mouth.
Rey fired.
Vice’s body jerked back.
Instead of a scream, my mouth gaped, and a whine escaped my throat. I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t move.
Vice grunted, then looked down at the hole in his chest. “Rey,” he said. “Put the gun down.”
Rey dropped the gun and covered her mouth, realizing she’d shot Vice.
I whimpered, still holding my ax.
Vice took inventory of me from head to toe, then peeled my fingers off the ax’s handle. He threw it on the floor and took my face between his warm palms. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” he told me, and the icy pale pink of his eyes comforted me. Rey asked about Jamie, but Vice didn’t answer, and that couldn’t be “fine,” but I believed him anyway.
“There’s a hole in your chest,” I told him and put my hand over it to stop the bleeding. “Are you gonna be fine?”
“Where are they?”
“They’re downstairs,” I said.
Chapter Twelve
Vice
They moved me from my ship’s med bay and into my quarters. It’d been ten days since Rey had shot me in the chest. Missed my heart by an inch. They patched me up and released me the next day. But the first night in the med bay, I fell asleep and awoke with Dewlyn curled up next to me. I didn’t move until the morning when she left for breakfast, then threatened half my staff with bodily harm if they said I was “fine.”
After Dewlyn returned from breakfast, she fussed over me, and so for the next six days, I feigned severe injuries and various side effects such as coma. I feigned coma, waking up only when I felt her move away. It worked on two fronts. One, Dewlyn didn’t leave my side, and two, she talked to me when she thought I was comatose. Dick moves on my part. However, she told me about Men of Earth, riggers, pairs in the shelter, their names, a safe house somewhere in Texas, and Torrent’s runaway pair.
I hadn’t even known he’d found a pair. I didn’t know if he’d bought her because he wanted a warm body in his bed or if he’d mated her. He’d gone after her alone, didn’t even file papers. I put a mental note to check how many more of us had kidnapped women instead of filing for the Pairing.
When I felt “better,” meaning I simply got bored resting in my idle state, Dewlyn fed me chicken soup. Now I sat in my recliner and watched Beast City from my ship. Dewlyn commanded the shutters, and they slid open wider, so the entire wall was an observatory.
Stars twinkled in the night. The City slept. Up here, Jamie held military strategy sessions. He might war with the humans; he only needed an excuse. I should definitely get off my ass and join him before he struck. And I would, just not now.
Dewlyn put the soup and a med gun on the side table next to her fiction book, a fairy tale called Rapunzel. I’d have to read it now and look for the Prince Charming character in there. Her hair tickled over my stomach as she found a comfortable place on my lap. A frown marred her pixie face, and she picked up the med gun. She put the gun over my gunshot wound. It would be the last of the meds, a serum shot designed to prevent scar tissue. “Stab it in there, Dewlyn.”