Chapter Seventeen
Where the hell had she gone? A dude takes one little nap and his soon-to-be wife slips away. Cooper yawned and rolled out of bed, stretching. How long had he been out? She couldn’t blame him. He’d performed valiantly. He’d fucked her at least four times. Maybe five. It was a lot of sex.
He felt a grin split his face. He had her now. This time was forever.
He wasn’t even worried that she’d gotten out of bed. She’d likely gone to get a drink or take a shower or…talk to Devi, who was probably here by now. The clock read a bit past seven.
They’d talked about her cousin in between bouts of extremely athletic sex. She was worried about Devi and what Zach might do if she kept up her recklessness.
He pulled on his jeans. He kind of wanted to see what his brother would do since if Zach showed up, he could catch the fucker and have the talk they so obviously needed to have.
Shit. He’d thought of Zach as his brother. He wasn’t. Not the way Hunter was. Zach had kept secrets, but if Kala was willing to forgive him and thought he had his reasons, he was going to listen. He’d had a great relationship with Zach before. Zach had sought him out. If he’d done it because he wanted to know him, then maybe he should talk to his mom and figure out if this was a relationship he should explore. His mother always gave sound advice, likely because she was a psychologist.
His biological mom was an infamous bombmaker. He had to let that sit a little while longer.
He opened the door to the privacy room and listened for a moment. The privacy rooms were soundproofed, for obvious reasons, so he wouldn’t have heard Devi and the bodyguard coming in. He listened to see if he could hear the dulcet tones of his soon-to-be bride giving her cousin the business.
He heard nothing.
They were probably in the locker room. He should go down and hang out with Landon so he wasn’t bored while Kala argued with her stubbornest cousin. He grabbed two beers out of the lounge and then made for the stairs.
And dropped both when he looked down. For a split second he couldn’t process what he was seeing.
His mom. She lay on her back on the floor of the lobby, her chest covered in blood.
The world sped up again and he took the stairs two at a time, desperate to get to her. He hit his knees. Phone. He left his phone somewhere down here. He reached for her hand.
Her eyes opened suddenly, and she struggled to breathe. “Kala. Lena Gallagher took Kala and Devi. You have to find them. Kala…they knocked her out, but Devi was still conscious.”
What the hell? Who would take Kala? He shook his head. That was na?ve. Any number of assholes she’d pissed off would love to kill her, but there wasn’t a body. Nausea rolled through him. Huisman. Huisman wanted her once. Phone. He had to call 911.
His mom squeezed his hand. “You have to find her.”
He did, but first he had to call an ambulance. And then Big Tag.
The door slammed open and Cooper stood, trying to protect his mom.
“Devi Taggart, you are in so much fucking trouble,”
a deep voice called out from the front hall. “The alarm isn’t even on. I’m talking to your moth…”
Landon stopped, his eyes going wide. “Coop?”
“Call 911.”
Thank god, he wasn’t alone. “And then call Tag. He’s probably at Sanctum, so he’s not far. Tell him to turn on Kala’s tracker.”
He leaned back over, taking his mother’s hand again. She’d been shot but she was holding on. He heard Landon call. “Mom, I need you to stay with me.”
“I’m fine,”
she said, her eyes tightening and proving her words wrong. “Kala and Devi aren’t. That terrible woman. Tell Ian she’s Eli Nelson’s daughter and she’s working with Huisman.”
Fuck. If she was working with Huisman, then she probably had access to his tech, including whatever he did last time to overload the tracker. His gut tightened. “Did she say anything? Give you any indication about where she was taking them?”
His mom’s head shook slightly, and it seemed to cause her pain. “No. I don’t know. I’m just…”
“Shhhh,”
he said. “Save your strength.”
This couldn’t be the end. He couldn’t lose her. Couldn’t lose Kala now that they were finally on solid ground.
He held his mother’s hand while Landon called in the troops. His father made it mere seconds before the ambulance got there, and Cooper would never forget the look on his face. His father had been the one to hop in the ambulance after the EMTs stabilized her.
The sirens were still wailing as Big Tag and Charlotte ran in.
“What the fuck happened, Cooper?”
Tag stared down at the pool of blood. “Eve?”
“The EMTs said she needs surgery, but she is in good shape.”
A weird numbness settled over him. If he let himself feel the horror of the last thirty minutes, he wouldn’t be able to move, and he had to. Kala didn’t need emotional reactions right now. She needed him focused on one thing. Getting her back. “What does the tracker say?”
Please let her tracker work.
Ian’s head shook. “I tried and the software says it’s offline. So it’s Huisman. I find it very interesting that Ben Parker is in town and Huisman shows up.”
“Ian, Ben is at Top with Kenzie right now,”
Charlotte pointed out. “He has no idea, and neither does Kenzie.”
She looked to Cooper. “We decided to leave her out for the time being. I’m worried she’ll give herself away, and I don’t know how we explain to Parker that the girl he’s on a date with got kidnapped. While she’s sitting there with him. But the rest of the team is on the way. Tris is already looking into private airfields around the area. I want to see the security tapes.”
He’d already thought about that. When Landon had finished making his calls, Cooper had ordered him to go into the security office and pull everything they had. It wouldn’t show what happened inside, but they had cameras covering all around the building and in the parking lot. “Landon is doing that right now.”
“Yeah, I’ll be having a talk with him,”
Big Tag said grimly.
Cooper’s hands were trembling. He forced them to stop. Cool. Calm. He needed to stay that way. “Don’t be hard on him. Devi’s been acting up lately. She ditched him, and he came after her. He was too late. I think we have to bet she took Devi as a way to draw Zach out. Huisman wants the bombmaker, after all.”
“Then why take Kala?”
Charlotte asked, her face pale.
“Because Huisman wants to hurt me,”
Big Tag said with grim surety. “I’ve already got word into Drake that his super-psychologist was a plant. Between Zach and now Lena, we’ve got some real problems with the Agency’s vetting process. I have to wonder where the hell Huisman found her and how much he paid her.”
His mom had said something he hadn’t truly understood. “Mom said Lena is someone’s daughter. Do you know a guy named Nelson?”
What was the first name? “Evan, maybe.”
For the first time in his life, he watched Ian Taggart’s jaw drop. “Eli fucking Nelson? He didn’t have kids. He wasn’t married.”
“And I blew up the boat he was on. Technically, he blew it up himself. He didn’t know I’d transferred the bomb to his ship,”
Charlotte explained.
Ian ran a hand over his sandy hair, a look of complete shock on his face. “He said it to Kala. The sins of your father will be visited upon you. He’s been planning this for a fucking decade. He found Lena, brought her in, placed her where she could work her way close to the target. Us.”
“I knew she was up to something. I think she’s been using those so-called therapy sessions against Kala.”
Charlotte paced. “She’s been trying to isolate her so she could do exactly this.”
“And when it didn’t work, she used Devi and Eve to get Kala to comply,”
Cooper explained. “That’s what my mom said.”
“You should go to the hospital and be with your dad,”
Charlotte offered.
Big Tag’s head shook. “He’s not going anywhere except to work. He’s not going to be able to do or think about anything else right now. I called Hunter. He’s on his way. And Vivi’s trying to find a flight from London. Sean and Grace are on their way, too. Alex is going to have support.”
A huge relief. In so many ways. Not only realizing his dad wasn’t alone, but that Big Tag knew his heart. “I’m on this team. I won’t lose it the way I did last time. She would be pissed if I did, and she already makes fun of me, so I’m going in stoic this time.”
“See that you do.”
Big Tag reached for his wife’s hand, drawing her close. “We’re going to find her.”
Charlotte wrapped her arms around her husband and held on.
The door came open, and Tristan strode through. He already had his laptop in hand. He looked like he’d come from the gym, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt. “Aidan dropped me off. He’s heading to the hospital but wants you to know he’ll come along if we figure out where they are. Or Carys. He wants a doctor there.”
“We’ll take Aidan. His specialty is…”
Cooper had to take a long breath. “Trauma. God, hasn’t she had enough damn trauma? At least I think he’ll keep Devi halfway healthy because Zach won’t come in otherwise, but he’ll torture Kala. Again.”
Tris moved in, giving him a big hug. “It’s going to be okay. She’s the toughest woman I know. And you should understand that I’ve already put the word out to Zach. There are some places I know he used to frequent on the Internet. I have to hope he still checks those addresses.”
“We can’t count on him,”
Cooper said, stepping back, but he was in control again. “The last time I saw him he was… Well, the last time Kala saw him he was walking through the Rocky Mountains. I was kind of drugged.”
“He’ll have a way,”
Charlotte said, wiping her eyes. “I’m going to look at those security cams.”
Landon stepped out of the office. “She took them offline somehow. They’re blank from five minutes after Eve walked in the door to right before I showed up. I have to assume they had something that took the wireless offline.”
“Okay, we need to think. Where would they take her?”
Charlotte asked. “She said she was flying to DC. Is there any way they would take her somewhere close? She wouldn’t get on a plane without knowing where they were heading.”
“No, but we have to assume using drugs to knock her out was always the plan,”
Big Tag replied. “We need a list of small planes that took off in the last hour. I know we can’t be certain whatever flight plan they put in place is the real one, but we can call in the big guns and use satellites to track it.”
“To track what?”
Lou was breathless as she ran in. She had her laptop bag over her shoulder. She was in pajama bottoms and a hoodie. TJ was behind her wearing roughly the same. It looked like they’d been having a chill night at home.
“The plane they’ve got Kala and Devi on.”
Tris walked toward the conference room, opening his laptop.
TJ looked Landon’s way, his eyes narrowing. “You…”
Cooper shook his head. “He did his job. Devi’s been making it hard on him.”
“She said she was going to the bathroom,”
Landon argued. “I can’t go in there with her. Well, I did after she stayed there for fifteen minutes. She kept texting that she was having…girl problems. What am I supposed to do with that? By the time I went in and scared the crap out of a couple of elderly ladies, she’d gone through the window.”
“I’m going to kill my sister,”
TJ muttered. “I need to call my mom and dad. They’re supposed to be on vacation for their anniversary. I get to tell them once again one of their children is in trouble.”
“Why do we need to track the plane?”
Lou asked as TJ walked outside.
Cooper followed Ian and Charlotte as they entered the conference room. “Because we won’t be able to use her tracker. It’s Huisman. He killed it before.”
Lou was hot on his heels. “Yes, I know. It’s why I gave her a new one. Why hasn’t Uncle Ian pulled it up?”
“I tried.”
Ian stood, looking over Tristan’s shoulder. “It’s showing offline. You know he has tech that can kill our trackers. It’s how he got her the first time. Tris is going to give us a list of planes that could be Lena’s. What I need from you is to hop on traffic cams around this building and see if we can ID what vehicle they used. If we can follow them via the camera feed, we’ll have a better idea of what airport they flew out of.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Charlotte looked happy to have something to do. “I’ll help you, Lou.”
Lou’s eyes closed, and she sighed. “No one ever listens to me.”
What was going on with Lou? She wasn’t as freaked out as she should be. Almost like she knew something the rest of them didn’t. “Ian couldn’t find her tracker.”
Lou looked up at him. “Did he use the new login I gave him or did he forget and go back to the old one?”
Ian’s head came up. “There’s a new login?”
A frustrated sigh came from Lou’s mouth, and she pulled out her laptop. “I gave everyone the rundown on the new trackers and what they can do. And what can’t be done to them. No one listens. I’m sure you were all doodling or thinking about what we were going to do in the club later that night.”
Her fingers moved across the keys, typing with precision and a little irritation. “Seriously, I invented a whole new technology that protects our trackers from mild EMPs, which is what he used last time. He won’t even be able to tell it’s still online, and do I get a cookie?”
She turned her laptop screen around. “She’s in the air.”
Sure enough, there was a blip on the screen moving over North Texas to the east.
Cooper walked to Lou and wrapped her up in a big hug. “You are a freaking genius, Louisa Ward.”
“That’s why they hired me.”
She laid her head on Cooper’s shoulder. “We’re going to get her back. We’ll get them both back. They’ll be okay.”
“Lou, I swear I’ll listen to every lecture about science you ever try to give again.”
Big Tag came in behind her and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll get the jet ready. Cooper, I need you to make an educated guess about where they’re going. We’re following.”
“Hey, did everyone figure out Lou already solved the problem?”
TJ joined in, wrapping his arms around Lou from behind. “I didn’t know why everyone was so grim. I mean besides your mom nearly dying and my sister and Kala being in the clutches of a madman. But Lou will get us there and we’ll fix it.”
Such confidence.
And suddenly he had it, too.
“Did Lou find her?”
Tasha was in the doorway, and Cooper saw a sight he hadn’t counted on. Kenzie. She was still in the dress she’d worn when she met Ben Parker.
“Of course she did,”
Kenz said. She moved in and joined what was now a big bear hug, mostly around Lou. “She invented a whole new tech so she wouldn’t lose Kala again. She gave us a lecture about it.”
At least one of them listened. “We’ll get her back.”
With this team around him, they would make it happen.
* * * *
Kala came awake in darkness, nausea rolling through her.
“There’s a bucket to your right,”
a familiar voice said. “The drug you took, the side effects include vomiting. Usually after the subject wakes.”
His voice made her sick, too. She wanted to prove him wrong, but her stomach wasn’t in compliance. She rolled to her right and found the bucket just before the contents of her stomach came up. Chocolate croissants weren’t as good the second time around, but at least she hadn’t eaten the pizza she’d wanted to order. “Where’s my cousin?”
She hated being in the dark. Where the hell was Devi and what had she already gone through?
“She’s safe,”
Huisman said, his deep voice accented lightly. French. He was born in Montreal, though he’d spent his formative years in Toronto. Still, that French accent was there in every word of English he spoke. “For now. I wanted to talk to you. What do you know about the bombmaker?”
She got to her feet. She needed to figure out where the hell she was and how much rope he’d given her. There was zero way she wasn’t in a cage. She held her hands out, trying to find the bars or walls or whatever he had planned for her. “She’s Shannon Reed.”
“Very good,”
he said, sounding almost proud. “And you know Zach is your boyfriend’s biological brother. He’s boring, you know. Fastideux. Perhaps he would have been more interesting had he been raised by his true mother.”
“I assure you Eve McKay is his true mother.”
“We will agree to disagree,”
he said with a sniff. He was somewhere to her right, probably ten or twelve feet away. “I don’t understand why an interesting woman such as you would have anything to do with him. He has no style. No real intelligence. Now your sister fits with him.”
“I assure you my sister is intelligent.”
She hoped so because this fucker had almost certainly fried her tracker at this point. Kenzie and Lou and Tris would do anything they could to find her. And Devi. “I want to see my cousin.”
“She’s with Lena. They’re talking through all of her problems. So many issues with that girl. One would almost think something’s wrong with your family.”
“Yeah, she was a great therapist. Top notch, Doc.”
“She was actually top of her class. Completely delusional, though. I think her mother screwed her up with all those stories about the father who was taken away from them. The dumb bitch actually thought the rogue CIA agent she had a brief affair with would have come back to her.”
The evil doc had a real problem with women. She moved as quietly as she could. There seemed to be some kind of cot. That was what she’d been laid out on. Roughly six feet away there was another cot on the opposite side. So she might be getting a roommate. Hopefully her cousin. “Yeah, dumb bitches. It’s ridiculous to think the dude she’s screwing would be interested in the fact that they had a child together. So how’d you find her? Did you put out a post on the Internet asking for anyone who my parents killed in the line of duty to join your extraordinary league of supervillains?”
If she kept him talking, then he wasn’t torturing her. Although now that she thought about it, the worst would be him talking while he was torturing her.
He chuckled as though she’d amused him mightily. “League of Supervillains. I like this. It sounds strangely American. The rest of the world understands that these villains you look for are always close to the heroes. Personally, I think Americans don’t know either definition deep down.”
She reached out and found the bars. Yup. She was in a cage, but she didn’t panic. She’d known. She was pretty sure the bucket she’d thrown up in would also be her brand-new toilet. Fun. “Let’s move it along. I really would like to know how you found some random chick who thinks my father screwed her over. Is there, like, a Facebook group?”
He sighed as though disappointed. “Fine. You’re not being much fun, but I do like to explain my methodology. It’s probably the doctor in me. A very long time ago, my grandfather set up… Let’s call it a surveillance system. He wanted to keep track of the family that ruined his life.”
“Yes, the family that wasn’t even in the room when someone who wasn’t a member of the family killed your dad. You know Levi Green killed him, right?”
“Oh, see, that’s where you think the only people responsible for a tragedy are the direct actors. Such an American viewpoint. It tends to keep you from thinking of yourselves as, to use your word, villains. There’s more to any act. There are forces behind it, things that shaped and moved pieces into place. Who is more important? The pawn who unknowingly does the king’s work? Or the king himself.”
She would get no information from arguing with a delusional individual. She gently let her hands move from bar to bar until she found a corner. “You were telling me how you found Lena Crazy Eyes.”
Another chuckle. “See, when you talk like that, I find you amusing. So different from most women of my acquaintance.”
She heard him shifting. He was probably watching her through night vision goggles. The creep. “Like I said, my grandfather watched your family closely. He was rather weak, though. He wanted a way to hurt your father financially, but he never found it. I knew there were better ways to have revenge on a man like him. I was only eighteen when I started seriously looking for allies. I found Lena when she requested several Freedom of Information Act documents. She was looking for her father. He was connected to yours, so I had people tracking anyone who asked about him.”
The cage was a square, and to her left there was the smell of…loam. Earth. Were they underground? “And she thought ‘hey, I’ll screw up my whole life to help this dude I’ve never met before?’”
“She hated anyone connected with her father’s death. She couldn’t actually find out what happened, but she knew her father was on a classified mission and that Ian Taggart was somehow involved. I might have fudged a little there. You see, my father had managed to get the reports on Taggart’s missions. It’s surprising what millions of dollars will make an employee do. I didn’t tell her that Lena’s father was being hunted by the Agency for his treason. I let her believe it was Taggart who caused him to go underground and abandon her mother. From what I can tell, Nelson was a bastard who likely wouldn’t have cared even if he knew he had a child. But I find giving a person what they want helps make them far easier to manipulate.”
“So you find Lena, convince her to use her powers for evil, and manipulate your way to get around all the Agency guardrails?”
“That’s easier than you think, though I will admit I had a lot to work with when it comes to her. Despite her delusions about her father, she’s quite smart when it comes to her job. She’s a gifted therapist and a truly excellent profiler.”
All right. So she was in a roughly eight by ten cell. The door was in front of her, and she’d felt a box that was likely the lock. Probably some high-tech biometric system. The room outside felt bigger since she was almost certain Huisman was at least twelve feet away from her. Maybe a basement. Perhaps that loamy smell was actually mold. “Well, I was one of her clients, so I’ll have to disagree.”
“Do you? I thought she handled you perfectly.”
She should have known. “She recorded the sessions?”
“Yes. It’s why I waited so long. I’ve known for a while I would take you back. But when Lena managed to get herself assigned to profile Zachary Reed and assess your team, I knew I would wait. I’ve listened to those sessions several times now. They’re fascinating.”
He was giving her some serious ick. “Great. I’m thrilled you managed to violate me on another level.”
“I haven’t, you know. Your body was safe the whole time. I wouldn’t do such a thing to you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You would want me awake.”
“Exactly,”
he practically purred. “I want you to be with me every minute of the way, so you can be assured no one touched you this time.”
“You’re just a peach.”
She hated him. She’d thought she hated people before, but this one…this one truly threatened to turn her into what Lena thought she was.
Her eyes were starting to adjust. It wasn’t completely dark. There was something humming in the room, and it had a few buttons or switches that were lit.
“I am fascinated by how the experience—or non-experience—affected the rest of your life. I wonder if it hadn’t happened, would you be so fierce? Lena thinks so. Lena believes you were born a predator. She believes the only reason you don’t kill with abandon is the family around you.”
Lena was an idiot. She wasn’t a predator. She was a protector. When she managed to ignore the voices in her head, she knew exactly who she was. She was a woman who cared enough to kick some ass, willing to risk not being liked to help the people around her. Though she could give the man some reassurance. “I promise I’ll have total abandon when I kill you.”
Another laugh, though this one closer. He was moving toward her. She went still, trying to focus. Maybe she could see his shadow hovering.
“And that is why you fascinate me. I find it hard to believe Benjamin has feelings for you.”
“I think Ben’s feelings concerning me can be defined as confusion,”
she replied.
“Yes, I agree. He’s more attracted to your twin. Your light half. Does it hurt to know she got all the light?”
She hadn’t. It was just Kala’s own light didn’t always shine as brightly. And the darkness didn’t always mean something bad. “She’s the sun. I’m more like moonlight.”
The sun could burn, but the moon was silvery and illuminated the darkness. Not as showy, but every bit as important.
He hesitated. “That might be the first naivety I’ve heard from you. I don’t think I like it.”
“I don’t care what you like or don’t like,”
Kala admitted. “I don’t care what you think of me.”
“Which is perversely why I find you fascinating. I’ve been wondering if it wouldn’t hurt your father more if you were dead or if you were trapped here with me. Like my own tiger to train. I wonder how much pain it will take to turn you into what you could truly be.”
She had questions, too. “I wonder how much force it will take to kick your dick back into your body cavity.”
The lights came on suddenly and Kala blinked, the brilliance overwhelming her. He was right. It made her feel sick again. It was far, far too much, but then that was his point. She tried to look at him, but he was still a hazy shadow as her eyes desperately attempted to adjust.
“You know I like to be a bit dramatic. This place came on the market a few years ago. I know what happened here, so I bought it out of sheer sentimentality. Another place where the Taggarts ended lives, though I think in this case her brother was on your side. So sad. I didn’t know when I bought it how much it meant to you.”
His voice was low and soothing.
The world was becoming clearer now. Where the hell…
She was in the house Julia Ennis had brought her to, in the cell she’d shared with Kyle.
Emmanuel Huisman stood in front of her wearing slacks and a white button-down and expensive loafers. She saw what she hadn’t been able to before. They weren’t alone. Two large guards with big guns stood by the two ways in—the door that led up to the house and the one to her left that led to the tunnels her parents had saved her through the first time she’d been here.
She’d been right. She was back in Hell.
“Couldn’t even come up with something new, could you, Doc? You lack imagination.”
“And you lack respect. I need some information from you. I need to know how to communicate with Captain Reed,”
he said quietly, and she realized he had something in his hand.
“Can’t help you, asshole.”
She couldn’t. He was supposed to contact her, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. And hey, she couldn’t unless Lena had stopped and picked up her cell. So Zach was fucking safe, but she and Devi had real problems. She had a thought. It worked once. “I don’t suppose you would order a pizza for me. I’m very hungry.”
The first time she’d been held here, she’d managed to convince her captor to order pizza. Like most things in life, she was a weirdo when it came to pizza. No sauce double anchovies. It grossed most people out, but her cousin’s wife had used that order to pinpoint where she was being held.
Not that anyone would look here this time.
“Starving you will be one of the fun activities we can share.”
The man sounded positively chipper. “We’ll see how long you hold out. You see, while I’ll enjoy raping you, I would also find it amusing to turn you into a pet.”
She felt a nasty smile cross her face. “Oh, I can be your pet right now.”
The door came open, and Lena’s heels clicked down the stairs. She was back to her normal perfection, but she couldn’t quite hide the crazy in her eyes. “Oh, look, you’re up. I was kind of hoping you would die.”
It was always good to make friends. She didn’t reply, merely offered up her middle finger.
Devi was brought down after Lena, her hands in zip ties and an armed guard at her back. She’d obviously been crying but she didn’t seem physically harmed.
“You okay?”
Kala asked.
Devi nodded. “Apparently they want me all pretty and whole. They didn’t do anything while you were asleep. Although listening to that one talk was torture. She thinks she’s intelligent, but she’s one more narcissistic asshole. Why is the world filled with them?”
Kala stepped back, allowing them to open the cage door. She watched the hand movements of the guard. It was how she’d gotten out of here the first time.
But they’d changed the locks. Now they used biometrics, so she would need someone’s thumbprint. The good news? It didn’t have to be attached to a living hand.
Devi was shoved in.
“I’m saving Devon for later,”
Huisman explained. “I think Zach is going to want proof of life, and he’ll be far more reasonable if she’s as perfectly pretty as she is right now. She’s the bait. Though if it doesn’t work, one can also make the bait bleed. Chum the waters a bit. However, I thought I would start with you.”
Excellent. If they were going to let her out, she had a shot. Adrenaline started to pump through her, and she took a long breath, centering herself. She would have to be careful because the room was tight, and if they started firing it could hit Devi. But she could do this. There were only four of them, and Lena didn’t count. Lena would run the first chance she got. Huisman might, too. He tended to run rather than fight. Coward. She would take him down, and he wouldn’t get back up this time.
And then the dart hit her. Taser. Straight to her chest. She heard Devi’s startled scream and then she was falling to the floor, every muscle in her body seizing and shaking. Her head hit hard, and her vision started to fade again.
“You idiot. I didn’t give you the order,”
Huisman was saying.
Someone pulled the dart out but her body kept shaking.
“It doesn’t matter,”
Lena replied. “You would be better off putting her down. She’s nothing but an animal. She’ll turn on you in the end. If you ask me, she should have been put down as a child. There are some animals that can’t be tamed.”
As the world started to go dark, she heard the most terrifying words come from Huisman’s mouth.
“That sounds like a challenge.”