Chapter 6 Not Dead #2
I glanced at my leggings and loose T-shirt—not remotely risqué—and tried to drive away the memory of Daniela’s death that wanted to break the surface. “I have a fair idea.”
He threw the lighter onto the table. “Wear a fucking hoodie.”
If my glare could scorch the earth, it would have. “Excuse me?”
“You can’t be this stupid.”
Uh, this motherfucker said that to my face?
“Wow, look at that glare,” he said with a humorless smirk. “Did I hurt your precious feelings?”
“Shut up—”
“You have to know how Hunters are by now. If you’re picked up, you’ll be raped before they bring you in.
Possibly by multiple men. Does that sound appealing to you?
Then they’ll bring you to me to determine what to do with you.
Do you think you could realistically pretend we’ve never met?
And if you don’t somehow give us both away as spies, then I’ll have to decide whether you’re imprisoned or you die.
So tell me, Sophia. Is your current outfit worth it? ”
My glare deepened. “You’re the one who sentences the prisoners?”
“Yes.”
This man had decided Tekqua’s fate. Barbed claws in my stomach sliced deep as the overwhelming urge to ask him rose.
I swallowed the words before they fell from my mouth.
He wouldn’t remember her—one face in hundreds he’d sent to a cruel fate without any sort of trial or due process.
But I would ask him. Eventually. One way or another, I’d uncover what happened to her.
“You’re a bastard.”
His face was all stone and fury. “Wear. A. Fucking. Hoodie.”
“What the hell is a hoodie going to do?” I yelled.
“Oh, I don’t know. Hide your breasts and face and long, curly hair?”
My voice dropped low, turned deadly. “I shouldn’t have to hide that I’m a woman.”
Some of the tension eased from his limbs. “No. You shouldn’t. But you have to protect yourself in this world where your gender makes you unsafe. Do you even have a weapon on you?”
Of course I did. I lived in this violent place the same as he did. No one went outside without a weapon. I extracted the small switchblade from my bra and showed it to him.
He stared at it blank-faced, then squeezed the bridge of his nose. After one slow breath, like he’d never come across a more senseless creature than me, he murmured, “How are you not dead?”
Good question.
He wouldn’t like the answer.
I’d survived merely by the grace of luck. My impulsiveness and clumsiness had landed me in dangerous situations, but I’d always been in exactly the right spot, protected by the right people.
One day, my luck would run out.
I replaced the blade while he stared above my head, a faraway look in his eyes, and his distraction finally allowed me to study their color.
So many colors. Brown at the center, blue at the outer, flecks of green and amber in between. They’d technically be termed hazel, but a flicker of irritation burned at the ocean of hues there.
Evil wasn’t supposed to be pretty.
Those faceted eyes locked on mine. “You have no survival instincts. You don’t know how to fight. You can barely keep quiet when you’re hiding from a group of men intent on killing you. What skills do you have? Why would they send me someone like you?”
I sucked in a fortifying breath. “They sent someone expendable. You know, just in case.”
His face drained of color. “Expendable?”
Yeah, probably shouldn’t have admitted that to him.
Hi, I’m the reject they didn’t care to lose. Want to trust me with your secrets?
He scratched his neck. “It didn’t occur to me to ask for someone competent. They were supposed to send a soldier.”
“I was a soldier. They made me stop.” I scrutinized the floor. “For obvious reasons.”
I thought of the scant questions I was asked before they allowed me into the Defiance army three years ago.
“Name?”
“Sophia Elena Reeves.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Do you have any military or combat experience?”
“No.”
“Do you have any trade skills?”
“Er… No.”
“Have you handled weapons before? Are you familiar with firearms?”
“Still no.”
“Do you have any medical illnesses?”
“No.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Definitely no.”
And that was it. That night, I was a Defiance soldier with a gun and everything.
“So they…what?” Lucas demanded. “Sent you here to die?”
I rocked on my feet, unwilling to look him in the eye.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Time wobbled around me while those words settled into all the cracks between us, somehow both lightning fast and interminable.
He didn’t speak, so I finally filled the silence.
“What do you want to do? Do you want someone else?”
At first, he didn’t answer, but then his voice floated toward me, softer and closer than it had been before. “Is your name really Sophia?”
My gaze lifted to his, and I sensed a thread of disquiet that hadn’t been there before, despite that his expression remained unyielding. I pulled my dog tags from underneath my shirt to show him.
REEVES
SOPHIA E.
290 98 1240
A POS
CATHOLIC
“My friends call me Soph.” A moment stuttered past. “But you can’t call me that.”
His stare lasered in on my name debossed into the metal, but the edge of his mouth lifted an infinitesimal degree. “Are you saying we aren’t friends?”
Was that…a joke?
“Come on.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen, and I followed.
I sat at the table while he took the seat opposite.
We faced each other, almost like a poorly lit interrogation room.
The fading daylight from the large kitchen window cast a lavender pall over us.
Shadows crept from the corners, stretching fingers toward us, wanting.
“So, does Harrison believe me now?” Lucas asked.
“I think he was pleasantly surprised.” As was I, not that it mattered.
“It isn’t always going to be easy. It was Bennie’s plan, so it was poorly organized. He’s better at battle than stealth.”
My ears perked. “Benjamin Cook? One of the other Blood Colonels?”
He snorted. “No one calls him Benjamin. And no one calls us Blood Colonels.”
“They do where I come from.”
He gave me a flat stare. “Well, Benjamin is not one for details. He has good ideas, but I’ve been editing his plans since I started.”
I reflected on what Theo had said when Lucas joined the NSF ranks.
“Wherever he came from, he appears to be a talented strategist.”
“He appears to be a serial killer,” I mutter into my stew, to which Theo chuckles darkly.
“There’s no pattern I can trace, no strategy I can pin down,” he says. “They’re gaining the upper hand, and they know it. It’s like fighting someone who knows the moves you’re going to make even before you do.”
“Sounds like we need a secret weapon.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m looking for it.”
Who’d have thought the secret weapon would be the man himself?
“I was conveniently unavailable to help him with this,” Lucas said, guiding me back to the conversation.
“Hmm. How sad.”
Those pretty eyes brightened, penetrating. Now that we were back to business, the cold wrath cloaked him like it had last week. Ice crystals could have sparkled on the planes of his face, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“I have information about General Wyatt.”
A flutter rose in my stomach. General Dean Wyatt was the chief of staff of the US Army. He commanded all their forces, including the Hunters.
“He’ll be visiting in a month,” Lucas said.
“How long?”
Lucas ran a hand through his dark hair, tugging a bit. “Not sure. He doesn’t tell anyone his plans. Makes it harder to track him.”
“Right. Anything else you can tell me?”
Annoyance flashed across his face. “Obviously, yes. If you’ll let me speak, I’ll tell you.”
Hatred sparked to life in my gut, but I stayed quiet, letting him gather his useless thoughts in silence.
He swallowed. “So… He won’t come out. He never does, but I believe—I believe he’ll have his daughter with him.”
“You believe, or you know?”
Something weird happened with his mouth, like a twist or a sneer. It tried to betray his feelings, but didn’t quite get there.
“It’s…been mentioned that she may be given to one of us,” he said.
My brain glitched. “Uh… Given?”
“As a…bride.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “She’s sixteen. I thought y’all might take exception to that.”
Bile rose in my throat. “To be clear, you’re telling me the leader of the NAO’s army is coming here to give his teenage daughter to one of his faithful subordinates?”
His eyes cut to mine. “It’s an act. A show of proof he believes the NAO’s stance on family values. I believe she’s meant to be a reward to the NSF for service and loyalty.”
“I see. And which of you has he deemed most loyal?”
My heart thudded several times before his wooden voice filled the ominous silence. “Me.”
Silence fell.
His gaze locked on a point below my eyes—my chin, maybe—and he remained utterly still.
I crossed my arms. “You’re being given another sex slave? Exactly how many of those do you need?”
The muscle in his jaw spasmed again. “At least one more.” Then, a hateful smirk spread like syrup across his face. “But to be fair, I didn’t ask for her. I only asked for you.”
Was he trying to provoke me?
“What happened to not interested?” I asked, annoyed by the rasp in my words.
That condescending expression on his face only deepened. “Still don’t believe me, do you?”
“What else could you want? I have nothing to give.” The anxiety surrounding the unknown ate away at my brain like cancer.
“I can tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want a child bride.
So let me explain my next piece of information.
” He placed both arms on the table, interlacing his fingers.
“Taking her will both save her and piss him off. It’s a power play more than anything.
I think I could be persuaded to escort Miss Wyatt to the gaming strip on the Friday following her arrival.
I think I might also be persuaded to take her the way through Riverside. Say, around ten that night?”
“Could you be persuaded to be alone?”